Shanghai Culture Square theater announced the launch of a new musical center and its first foreign musical production in three years at the opening of this year's Shanghai International Musical Festival on Monday.

Fei Yuanhong, deputy general manager of the theater, says French musical Romeo and Juliet by Gerard Presgurvic will be shown at Shanghai Culture Square in May. Now that China's communication with the international musical theater sector has resumed, the Shanghai theater has pledged to present major foreign shows without compromising its support for original Chinese productions.

Located at Gate No 4 of Shanghai Culture Square, the new musical center is an underground area of the theater, with refurbished offices, rehearsal rooms, a recording studio and conference halls.

Zhang Jie, general manager of the theater, says the center will be "an incubation and creative center, a performance venue for experimental productions, an information center about musicals and a place for musical and theater lovers to meet up".

The gate used to be the backstage door of the theater where fans would wait for performers to emerge after shows to request autographs.

"We hope after the opening of the new center this backstage-door experience will be reserved for musical lovers," says Tang Yuze, a musical lover, and one of the actors for the first two immersive theater productions presented in the new space since Saturday.

The Smile off Your Face and A Game of You are one-on-one theater experiences produced by Ghent-based theater collective Ontroerend Goed from Belgium.

Both shows were adapted into Chinese and produced by Shanghai-based Tempest Projects and Fairchild Theater Production.