Dance theater “La Mariposa” (“Butterfly”) from Israel

Cutting-edge theater from around the world and innovative Shanghai productions of classics are underway in the Asia Contemporary Theater Festival.

Award-winning "fringe" plays, avant-garde musicals, monologues, puppetry, physical theater and a women's play are among the offerings in a contemporary theater extravaganza running through December 7.

The Asia Contemporary Theater Festival (ACT 08) features nine plays from around the world, and three from the Shanghai Drama Arts Center, where it is being staged. Foreign productions come from the UK, Spain, Israel, Germany, Japan and South Korea.

Theater workshops and "Fringe Shanghai" also invite participation by audiences and the public.

This fourth annual festival has three parts - four award-winning plays by the renowned Edinburgh (Scotland) Fringe Festival, plays from various countries and regions, and three adapted foreign classics by the Shanghai Drama Arts Center.

The Edinburgh offerings include the witty 60-minute comedy "Hysteria" about the anguish of modern life, played out in an awkward dinner engagement at Table No. 9. The three protagonists: an academic who researches modern-day neuroses and struggles to hang on to his own sanity, a woman event manager obsessed by fear of "missing the party," and the mortified waiter haunted by fears of global catastrophe.

Inspired by T.S. Eliot's poem of the same name, the play explores panic, the apocalypse and table manners through sharp dialogues, energetic physicality and intelligent comedic timing. The play won the 2007 Argus Angel Award and 2006 Total Theater Award, among other honors.