It was very popular among the college students, she said. Gao said he had learned a lot from the play such as the staging and the use of trivial roles as transition.

The traditional art forms like Peking opera have been losing popularity on the mainland. There were some 3,000 state-owned drama groups in the country, but most of them were having a difficult time in the market, said Ji, adding the private troupes, the number of which had not yet been added up, were find it harder in supporting themselves.

The success of "The Golden Cangue" was a good textbook for the mainland artists struggling for appealing to more audiences, Ji said.

The theater exchange had accelerated amid warming ties across the Taiwan Strait. Guoguang company alone had put on plays in Beijing, Xiamen and Fuzhou and scholars like Lin visited the mainland theaters almost every month.

In return, mainland troupes are invited to tour the island. But the learning is not one-way.

Lu Ailing, an associate professor from Taipei National University of the Arts, who staged a modern spoken drama of the ancient tragedy "The Injustice to Dou E" in the festival, said she was enlightened by "The Field" performed by the Tianjin People's Art Theater a few days ago in Taiwan. It was one of the works of the renowned playright Cao Yu. The play follows a succession of murders and stories of revenge set in a forest.

"The director is really skillful in employing the modern elements to enrich the play and make it a pure drama," she said. Lu's play "Cry Out Doer" also made full use of the Western arts like modern dance and even spoken English to represent a modern Dou E. Dou E was wrongfully accused of a murder and was proved innocent after she was executed.

"I want the play to appeal to the ordinary people," Lu said, responding to criticism of the lack of Chinese elements in the play. "Without audiences, the theater will die out."

Ramendu Majumdar, president of the International Theater Institute (ITI), said the case was not limited to China alone. Since the advent of TV, theaters are losing audience. He said he was delighted to see that Chinese government were making many arrangement to popularizing theaters like attracting students to theaters by keeping tickets price at a low level for them.

"In order to gain audiences and keep the ancient forms alive, theaters must look back into the past and move forward by finding a new meaning in them," he said.

Liu Housheng, 89, a well-known theater critic, said, the theaters must change, since the times had changed.

Ji said, how to reproduce the classics and carry on the cultural heritage on stage was a common challenge for artists on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, and the interaction between mainland troupes and those in Taiwan would be strengthened in the future.