2025 Shenzhen Theater Festival: a win-win for art and commerce

The 2025 Shenzhen Theater Festival recently concluded successfully. Over the month-long event, nine specially invited productions delivered more than 40 performances across a wide range of dramatic forms, leaving a notable mark on Shenzhen’s urban cultural life.

The festival tightly linked high-quality artistic content with diverse commercial venues, creating a cultural experience that enhanced both artistic value and commercial returns.

Russian male dance troupe performs drama WetMan at Shenzhen MixC World Theater. Photos Courtesy of RunArt.

Of the more than 40 performances, 24 were staged at Shenzhen MixC World Theater. Many productions premiered in Shenzhen, and the festival achieved an average attendance rate of 85%. The theater’s 15-meter “golden viewing distance” between stage and audience, together with inventive staging and attentive services, helped drive strong turnout.

The press hall at the China Resources Building Art Center became a hub for theatre lovers: it presented four avant-garde works in eight performances and hosted four drama workshops. The venue also offered a platform for young theatre practitioners to showcase their talents, encouraging experimentation and helping promising creative ideas move from inspiration to stage.

Popular interactive talk shows used humor to relieve everyday pressures, while livehouse performances generated a vibrant atmosphere that connected young audiences with music and rhythm. The festival thus expanded beyond drama into a full-scale cultural carnival.

Actors perform a pop-up dance at Shenzhen MixC World shopping complex.

RunArt, the cultural-operations arm of China Resources MixC Lifestyle, used the festival as a hub to mobilize MixC’s retail portfolio and map a new consumer landscape that blends art and commerce. By staging content-driven, atmosphere-rich experiential programs, it converted cultural foot traffic into commercial growth, continually injecting fresh vitality into venues and shopping districts.