On September 21, the finals of the 2nd ‘Youlin Cup’ Shakespeare Student Drama Festival were held at Zhejiang University. During the finals, Wuhan University's production of Shakespeare's famous comedy ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’, directed by Yan Chang, an instructor at the university’s School of Foreign Languages and Literature, stood out from the competition, beating  rival productions from Tsinghua University and Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University Joint International College, which was directed by a British teacher and director, and ultimately won the first prize in the English-language group. Li Sirui won the Best Leading Actress Award and Cui Shenglin won the Best Supporting Actress Award. This is the second time in a row that our school has won this award, following last year's win of Shakespeare’s play ‘Macbeth’, also directed by Yan Chang.

A total of 19 college and high school teams entered the semi-finals of this year’s drama festival through the preliminary video competition, and only eight teams advanced to the finals. More than 100 top Shakespeare scholars from around the world, including Yale University, the University of Birmingham and Peking University, attended the event, and the judging panel was composed of Shakespeare experts and professional directors. The Wuhan University team consisted of three students from the School of Foreign Languages and Literature: Li Sirui, Cui Shenglin and Li Qiuxiao. The team won over the audience with their excellent acting skills and high level of pronunciation, and the audience responded strongly with continuous bouts of laughter.

This year's ‘Youlin Cup’ Shakespeare Student Drama Festival was hosted by Nanjing University-University of Birmingham-Phoenix Publishing and Media Group Shakespeare (China) Center, supported by Youlin and hosted by Zhejiang University. During the event, the ‘International Symposium on Shakespeare, Medieval and Renaissance Literature’ was also held. The festival aims to create and perform Shakespeare’s classic plays in English and Chinese, thereby improving the literary and artistic cultivation, cross-cultural communication and Chinese and English expression ability of young Chinese students, as well as strengthen campus culture and aesthetic education. The excellent results achieved by our team in this year's event also fully reflect the English practice innovation of the School of Foreign Languages and Literature in the reform of undergraduate education and teaching and in the cultivation of first-class innovative talents.

rewritten by Wang Lu