Over the first half of 2022, good news about Shakespeare's drama activities from the College of Foreign Languages(CFL)has kept pouring in. In January, the play "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in the first "Shakespeare Festival" of the Shakespeare Drama Club of CFL won the Second Prize of "the First National College Student English Drama Festival." In May, the play "As You Like It" in the second "Shakespeare Festival" won the Excellence Award of "the 1st YOULIN Cup Student Shakespeare Festival China".
Although the two major contests are start-ups, the awards exert a strong influence in academic circles due to the authority of the organizers along with their scientific and standardized appraisal process. The "First National College Student English Drama Festival" was held by Guangxi University with other 5 domestic universities including Wuhan University, Shanghai University, Xinjiang University, Shantou University and Guizhou University. Beginning in May 2021, this competition, which lasted for more than 9 months, finally came to an end in January 2022 by means of video competition after being tested by unfavorable factors such as the epidemic. Under the leadership of Professor Wang Yingjun, the chief instructor of the Shakespeare Drama Club of CFL, the other instructors and student actors who participated in the rehearsal performed their respective duties, united and cooperated, overcame the specific difficulties of huge academic pressure and monumental rehearsal difficulty, and completed the performance video production and submission with high quality before the deadline. In the end, the play "A Midsummer Night's Dream" selected by the Shakespeare Drama Club stood out among many entries and won the Second Prize in this competition. "The 1st YOULIN Cup Student Shakespeare Festival China" was launched on December 3rd, 2019, by Nanjing University, University of Birmingham, and Shakespeare Center (China) of the Phoenix Publishing Media Group, sponsored by YLYK company, the YILIN Press, and the hosts--Nanjing University and Wuhan University. Due to the impact of the epidemic, this competition, which lasted for more than 2 years, attracted more than 2,000 universities and high schools in China to contribute their works. The organizers invited well-known experts both from home and abroad to serve as judges throughout the whole process. Instructors Wang Yingjun and Cheng Xuefang led student actors Huan Xiaoyu, Ding Chenyue, Shi Xiyue and Li Houcong to Nanjing to participate in the offline activities of the "the 1st YOULIN Cup Student Shakespeare Festival China". After several rounds of selections and evaluations, the play "As You Like It" selected by the Shakespeare Drama Club of CFL entered the finals as the only selected play submitted from Shanghai. After competing with a group of famous the “211” Project and the“985” Project universities, they won the Excellence Award of the College Student English group.
The Shakespeare Drama Club of CFL was established by the Department of English (Sino-US Cooperation) based on the "English Literature" course, and carried out the ideological and political construction of the course for the purpose of comprehensive education through “the second classroom” method. The Department of English (Sino-US Cooperation) has built a team of instructors composed of teachers with doctoral degrees for the Shakespeare Drama Club. The teachers and students of the club use the limited spare time to study, discuss, rehearse and perform Shakespeare's classic dramas in English. Since its establishment in September 2019, the Shakespeare Drama Club has held 2 campus-level "Shakespeare Festivals", during which Shakespeare's classic dramas "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "As You Like It" were put on the stage twice for the whole university, setting off a Shakespeare wave. The students that graduated from CFL within the three years before 2019 and the students that have entered CFL have all benefited from it. The Shakespeare Drama Club and its Shakespeare performances have also become one of the features of the English majors in CFL and a classic pattern reserved for “the second classroom” activities. In 2022, the teachers and students of the Shakespeare Drama Club are overcoming the difficulties together, and the two awards they have won will surely inspire their latecomers to continue to shine for the cultivation of English professionals that combines performance, education and competition.
