Staging an anniversary

The Pillowman, directed by Zhou Ke, whose oeuvre includes some 20 stage plays and one film, was Drum Tower West Theatre's opening production back in April 2014. McDonagh's Olivier Award-winning play follows a writer whose short stories seem to echo the child murders taking place in his town.

Every year, Drum Tower West Theatre makes a new version of the classic play, and this new version will feature actors Zhou Yiwei, Zhang Benyu and Wang Zichuan. It will be staged by different cast members in Beijing from May 23 to 26, and in Shanghai from May 30 to June 2.

The theater, which is tucked away in a narrow hutong (traditional-style alleyway) in downtown Beijing's Gulou Xidajie, or Drum Tower West Street, was born after Li, a former owner of an advertising company in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, moved to Beijing in 2010.

"The first time that I saw the empty and abandoned theater hidden in the hutong, I could envision how it now looks as Drum Tower West Theatre," recalls Li, who studied economic management in university and worked as a statistician for a State-owned company in her hometown in Northeast China's Heilongjiang province.

She moved to Shenzhen in 1996 and, a year later, she founded an advertising company in Guangzhou. She also became a producer and distributor of television dramas and TV movies.

Her interest in theater began in 2009, when she was introduced to Stan Lai's play, The Village, a 3.5-hour epic about people from the Chinese mainland who live in Taiwan, since her company was involved in publicizing the show in Guangdong. The following year, she moved to Beijing, where she watched many plays.