The 2017 Spring Festival Gala aims to make breakthroughs in themes, content and performance in order to close to real life.

By ZENG SUODI

The 2017 Spring Festival Gala will be broadcast in two weeks. The artistic ideas and creative experience of the chief director Yang Dongsheng have recently been unveiled, which may give us a hint as to what he is planning for the most-watched television program in the world.

The Spring Festival Gala is a special televised event produced by China Central Television and broadcast on the eve of Chinese New Year. First launched in 1983, it has an audience of more than 700 million viewers each year and features a diverse set of performances. The gala has become a ritual for many Chinese families, including overseas Chinese.

Yang has told media that he hopes innovation will be the highlight of the upcoming event, themed on the Year of the Rooster in the Chinese zodiac.

This will be Yang’s first time as chief director of the Spring Festival Gala, but he is a veteran of the event. He was among the crew working on the gala six times between 1991 and 2016. He held a wide variety of roles, including program director, musical director and executive director.

Yang defines himself as a “rookie” in terms of directing the 2017 Spring Festival Gala because he expects to keep learning this process. “I’m really fond of television programs. They require a lot of self-study in the arena of artistic creation. Interest incites comprehension, which allows us to express our deep feelings toward life in an artistic way. This is the prerequisite for a satisfactory Spring Festival Gala.”

Yang majored in philosophy in university and began to direct television programs after graduation. As an expert in the musical gala, he can easily handle songs and dances, which make up a large part of the Spring Festival Gala. In regard to other elements of the event, the experienced director compared himself to a craftsman continuously striving to work and innovate.

Yang said that extreme beauty produces heart-rending musical items and empathy invites heartfelt creativity. As both a creator and audience member, he believes strongly in the importance of innovation. Regarding the prospects of the 2017 gala, Yang said he hopes to “direct one that the public doesn’t complain about.”

The 2017 gala will take advice from audience feedback. By Dec. 20, 2016, the gala crew had received 6,129 emails including 5,720 items. 2,740 individuals and 61 groups from seven countries have submitted works, including songs, dances, instrument plays, comic dialogues, comedy sketches, acrobatics and magic, as well as folk and creative performances.

Among these items, nine or ten comic dialogues and comedy sketches will be staged at the 2017 gala, a record high in terms of quantity. The crew have invested a lot of effort in them as they have long been the public focus in past years. Because of this, discussions on them began as early as April 2016. This was the earliest session in history.

The staff chose 100 themes by combining prominent issues and public affairs. They then whittled them down to just 40 for scripts, of which 28 were rehearsed. The best comic dialogues and comedy sketches will be chosen in the end.

The directing team aims to make breakthroughs in themes, content and performance. In order to produce items close to real life, the team members this year have focused on grassroots lives.

In addition, there are a variety of performance forms regarding language items this year. The creators will select art forms based on traditional comic dialogues and comedy sketches. By combining these with impressive technologies, audiences will have a new experience.