The first Macao International Comedy Festival will be held from March 11 to 18, announced a news conference in Macao Cultural Centre on Monday.

The one-week event, initiated by the comedy production company Mahua FunAge, the online ticketing platform Damai and the bureau of culture affairs of Macao Special Administrative Region, will feature drama and film screening, comedy awards ceremony and comedy industry forum.

International productions, such as the Spanish musical comedy A Comedy of Operas and the Norwegian theatrical play A Dance Tribute to the Art of Football, will be staged during the festival. A Cantonese version of the interactive whodunit play Shear Madness, performed by Macao's local actors, will debut during the festival.

Besides, the event will start from the screenings of three comic films, namely, Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Table for Six and Men of Deeds.

The event's forum section will be held in Hengqin of Zhuhai, Guangdong province. Comedy directors, scriptwriters, actors and psychologists will be invited to join sessions focusing on how to solve problems faced by today's comic creation and foster the growth of new generations of comedians.

Besides, 25 local dancers will reproduce a piece of performance from an original comic musical of Mahua FunAge at Macao's Chinese New Year's celebration float show, delivering happiness and blessings to the audience, according to Zhang Chen, founder and president of Mahua FunAge.

Leong Wai Man, head of the cultural affairs bureau of Macao, said that the comedy festival, as an innovative cultural activity that blends artistic performances, amusement and commercial consumption, will help promote Macao's tourism development and its cultural exchanges with the Chinese mainland.

The bureau aims to enrich the cultural and tourism resources of Macao, to build it in to a culturally diverse, unique and dynamic city, she added.