Evolution of each step

Li says that One Fine Day has evolved by itself and he enjoys observing the reactions of the audience during the show.

When the show ends, those people depart the stage to return to their lives. "There are some people who still keep in touch with us. For example, a person from our Shanghai version sends weather forecasts in the group chat, which we launched when the show recruited actors and actresses in Shanghai five years ago."

Li didn't plan to restage the play this year. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, theaters have been forced to shut down.

On Aug 10, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism said theaters could limit attendance at each performance to 50 percent of capacity, with audience members not allowed to sit next to one another. It enabled theaters to gradually get back to normal.

In July, Li, who is the deputy director of Beijing Young Dramatists Association, started to prepare for the annual Beijing Fringe Festival, one of the biggest theater events in the capital and founded by renowned director Meng Jinghui in 2008. The idea of restaging the play, One Fine Day, came to his mind.

Beijing Fringe Festival, which will be held from Sept 25 to Nov 15, will see 13 Chinese plays being staged in Beijing, Xiamen of Fujian province and Xi'an of Shaanxi province.

According to Meng, the founder and artistic director of the festival, this year, there are 157 candidate plays, the highest number of applicants to the festival to date.

"The creativity of young Chinese theater workers is vibrant and we feel proud of introducing some of their best works to festival audiences this year," says Meng, adding that the plays will also be streamed online.

Li, born and raised in Lanzhou, Gansu province, graduated from the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing in 1995 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in theater set design. He worked for a national theater company for two years before returning to the university to pursue a master's degree in the same major.

The 48-year-old directed his first play in 2007 and had his works staged during the Beijing Fringe Festival. He is known for working with amateur actors and actresses. In 2011, he founded the New Youth Group and directed plays, such as Popular Mechanics (2018) and A Brief History of Human Evolution (2019).

Like other people confined at home during the pandemic, Li stayed in with all his plans for new plays postponed, but luckily, he had lots of time to review his past works and talk with his friends online or on the phone.

"We always get busy for the next project and suddenly, we are offered the chance to slow down and look back. It was like a watershed moment. I couldn't help thinking about my past works, such as One Fine Day," says Li.