Kids get a taste of life on stage

On Aug 24, a children's play, Flowers in the Mirror, was staged at the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing.

Before the performance, children aged between 5 and 9 enjoyed a three-day training session run by teachers from QFun Theater, which has been dedicated to children's theater education in China since 2013.

Flowers in the Mirror is adapted from the fantasy novel of the same title by Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) novelist Li Ruzhen. The story follows a child named Tang Xiaoshan, who is searching for 12 flowers on a trip.

In addition to performing, the children also took on different theater roles, including as assistant director, costume assistant and stage supervisor's assistant, which gave them a better overview of how the theater operates.

According to Wang Nan, the producer of QFun Theater, who was one of the trainers, some of the children had no previous theater experience, but they worked hard at their parts.

It was the first time for the Forbidden City Concert Hall to introduce theater training to its annual Gateway to Arts summer festival, which is one of Beijing's biggest arts festivals for children during the summer vacation.