"Whether children like it or not is the only thing I care about in this play," Meng Jinghui, the avant-garde drama director told his staff when rehearsing the Magic Mountain, China's largest-ever children's play.

Meng and his colleagues still have a month before the premiere of the play, which tries to convey the meaning of love and friendship through 112 bear images. Meng will also name the bear images with names given by children and dress the man actors up at the request of children.

"It's the children audience's powerful imagination that helped me overcome many difficulties," Meng said, confessing the children's play is a new yet experimental approach to himself.

To collect children's opinion by wider range, Meng especially arranged a rehearsal at the Beijing Jingshan School, where he and more than 100 students together watched the 30-minute rehearsal. He watched carefully the children's reaction to every movement and word by the actors, and put every trifle down on his notepad.

"I will make changes to the script accordingly, " he told reporter.

Magic Mountain, as the insiders observed, will be another harvest to Meng both in fame and box office. Before that, Meng directed his first children's play "Labyrinth" and hit the record box office revenue of 6.8 million yuan (around US$822,000).

Magic Mountain to premiere in the Spring Festival (Chinese lunar new year) is expected to attract 60,000 people.

Sources with the local ticket office said by Dec. 20, the advance booking for Magic Mountain had exceeded 1.8 million yuan (about US$218,000), with a single ticket priced between 80 to 380 yuan (around US$9.7 to US$45.9).

(Xinhua News Agency December 22, 2005)