36 Yongjia RoadShanghai Culture Square is a regular host to musicals, concerts and dramatic theatre ranging from Les Miserables to Paw Patrol Live. While it is smaller than the Shanghai Grand Theatre in People's Square, the 65,000 square meter building that cost 1.1billion RMB and has just over 2000 seats tells you they didn't pull any punches during construction.
Shanghai Cultural Plaza is located in the center of Shanghai, bounded by Maoming South Road in the east, Shaanxi South Road in the west, Fuxing Middle Road in the north, and Yongjia Road in the south.
Founded in 1952, the Cultural Square was rebuilt from the former Yiyuan Dog Run. It has always played an important role in the social and cultural life of Shanghai people and is one of the important mass political and cultural activity centers in Shanghai . Since its reconstruction and opening in 2011, Shanghai Cultural Plaza has insisted on integrating modern performances, art exhibitions, and cultural experiences, taking musical theater performances as the main line, and various fashion and classic arts as auxiliary lines, with the vision of "Cultural Paradise, Dreams Blooming", Efforts are made to incubate and build an art stage for the development of musicals, lead the cultural and leisure industry, and create a cultural and ecological landmark well-known to the public.
In the past 11 years, the cultural square has performed more than 2,700 performances, attracting more than 3 million audiences, and held nearly 2,300 public welfare activities, with a total of more than 400,000 participants. Successfully introduced classic plays such as "The Phantom of the Opera", "Elizabeth", "West Side Story", "Rock and Roll Mozart", "Notre Dame de Paris", and produced "My Bucket List", "Rachmaninoff", "Romeo and Juliet", "Fan Letters" " and many other Chinese versions of musicals, the first original musical incubation plan launched in the country, hatched and presented many original musicals such as "The Empress of the Southern Tang Dynasty", "Life and Death Sign", "Sorry I Forgot", and toured all over the country . While working hard to implement the development goal of "building a landmark public cultural and art center in Shanghai", as a professional platform for musicals, it continues to explore the role of an industry integrator and holds the "Performing Arts World-Shanghai International Musical Theater Festival" every year. Industry-university-research resources support excellent original works and enhance the audience base of the musical theater industry.
At present, the cultural square has a main theater with 1949 seats on three floors. The width of the stage is 20 meters and the height is 11.5 meters. The first professional theater in China that takes musical theater as its genre.