This year's Beijing theater festival will include a section on traditional art forms such as Quju Opera, Chen Nan reports.

Lao She Theater Festival has been an annual celebration of the relationship between theater and literature since it was launched in 2017.

In its sixth year, the festival will start on Sept 14 and run through December with more than 50 performances of over 20 theatrical productions adapted from classic literary works, as well as over 50 public events such as workshops and forums.

The Chinese play Faces in the Crowd will open the festival and be staged from Sept 14 to 18 at the Poly Theater in Beijing. Adapted from author Feng Jicai's collection of 36 short stories, all set in the port city of Tianjin, the play portrays a range of characters, 54 in total, such as a doctor, a street food seller and a female bar owner, living between the late 19th and early 20th centuries.