On 10 May, the Mulan Children's Theatre in Sweden held its closing performance for the spring term of 2026. Over thirty participants performed the three plays "A Seriously Amazing Week", "The Day the Grown-Ups Left" and "Ten Minutes with Her", along with the sketch "I Don't Want to Learn Chinese".

The Mulan Children's Theatre was founded in May 2019 and is the first children's theatre for children of Chinese heritage in Sweden, and in the Nordic region. Its artistic director is Tong Meng, a well-known director, actor and playwright based in Sweden. Xiao Yong, principal of Xingzhi School, also serves as the theatre's chair.

What are we actually learning, when we learn theatre?

Tong Meng, Artistic Director, Mulan Theatre Sweden

On 10 May, the Mulan Theatre's closing performance for the spring term of 2026 went ahead, and all went well.

Packing up backstage, I could finally breathe out.

It is the same every year: you hold your breath before it starts, and only afterwards do you think, "ah, nicely done! What good actors!"

This term our four groups completed four original works.

The "Lion King" group for 7- to 9-year-olds, the "Hamlet" group for ten and up, the adult group "M Theatre Workshop", and a mixed-age sketch group.

Before every rehearsal period I feel there is not enough time.

And in fact there isn't.

The children have school, the adults have work;

someone falls ill, someone travels, someone has a competition, someone has a child to look after.

Lines are occasionally forgotten, people collide in the blocking, the music never lands on the beat, and rehearsal circles forever around "one more time".

But theatre is a very interesting thing.

What decides it in the end is never "perfection", but whether everyone is willing to do one thing properly, together, all the way through.

What moved me most about the group this term is that they genuinely began to have a sense of the team.

If someone forgets a line, whoever is nearest picks it up;

if someone is nervous, a quiet "you've got this" comes from another child;

and though they have already come off stage themselves, they stand in the wings helping someone else with their lines.

Many of the children are small, but they already understand what cooperation means.

There was a small incident on the day of the performance.

Just as the first piece began, the computer froze and the sound never came on.

My mind went completely blank.

But those seven- and eight-year-olds on stage — not one of them stopped.

Nobody froze, nobody questioned it, they simply carried on.

In that moment I was genuinely a little stunned.

I am always telling them: "once you are on stage, whatever happens, you keep going."

I never expected they would actually do it.

And by a group of seven-year-olds!

What they have learned is already more than simply "acting".

Some of the children have been with me since the Mulan Theatre's very first lesson.

I have more or less watched them grow up.

They used to run about in class with their noses running; now they can hold an entirely serious conversation with me about a character's motivation.

Their questions often leave me stumped.

You notice that children really are growing.

They begin to understand people through their roles — to understand emotion, to understand the world.

And in the children who joined the theatre recently, the change is especially clear.

One arrived with a voice like a mosquito;

another did not dare stand in the middle of the room;

and a few were "hyperactive in waiting", capable of losing their shoes eight hundred times in one lesson.

But slowly they began to raise their hands, to speak up, to look at an audience from the stage and talk.

The adult group, "M Theatre Workshop", gives me even more to think about.

Many of them were holding back the first time they came.

Afraid of embarrassment, of getting it wrong, of not being good enough.

And then they opened up more than anyone.

They will discuss a single line for an age;

they send me long character analyses;

they polish one glance, one gesture, over and over.

In truth it is harder for adults than for children to enter into performance.

We are far too used to controlling ourselves.

But that is exactly where theatre becomes interesting.

It forces a person to be a little more honest.

You have to genuinely feel a character in order to play her.

And in that process, people often come to see themselves anew.

I have been working in theatre for nearly twenty years, and I still often think it has more power than I imagined.

It does not make people "good at acting"; it makes them start observing others seriously, and themselves afresh.

Someone suddenly understands why a character is angry;

someone discovers for the first time that "showing emotion" is not something to be ashamed of;

and someone slowly dares to stand in front of others and say what they actually want to say.

I have seen so many children grow confident through theatre, and many adults recover the ability to express themselves.

So the most precious thing about theatre may never be those twenty minutes on stage.

It is that it leaves a mark on a person.

Thank you to all the children who took the stage seriously this term.

You carry something very precious: seriousness.

Children today are clever, but "seriousness" is in fact becoming rarer.

Particular thanks too to all the parents. Above all to the parents of the youngest group.

The children do not know many characters yet; line by line, it is essentially the parents who worked them through.

On the day of the performance I saw a parent in a corner backstage, going over the lines with their child at the last minute.

A child standing on a stage has never been the work of one person alone.

Thanks to the theatre's chair, Xingzhi School's principal Xiao Yong.

For years he has kept the Stockholm children's New Year gala going, giving the children a larger stage.

Theatre as an art form really does need to be seen by more people.

Thanks to the theatre's manager, Mr Huang Lei, far away in Gothenburg.

Large matters and small, he gives both thought and effort; a thousand miles away, with his heart in the auditorium.

Thanks to the playwright, Ms Xu Kun.

Xu is the sort whose script makes me first slap the table in delight for three minutes, and then immediately grow anxious.

Because the writing is too good. So good that you cannot help thinking: if I stage this badly, how will I explain myself to her?

The phrase "the script is the foundation of the play" becomes, in her case, something quite concrete.

Thanks also to the photographer Mr Peng Zhuquan (Pm.Studio) for the professional production photographs of the children.

People grow up, appearances change, a great deal is forgotten.

But some moment on stage is kept forever in a photograph.

Finally I must thank our Swedish friend Tianmu.

He can act, he can perform Peking opera, and he can moonlight as a lighting technician.

One of the theatre's "steps in wherever we're short" players, who can turn a hand to anything.

This term is over.

During rehearsals it felt exhausting; once the performance ended, you do not want to let go.

Perhaps everyone who works in theatre is like this.

Sweden's best season has arrived as well.

The days grow longer, and the wind has finally turned warm.

I hope everyone has a good summer.

And I hope the laughter, the tears, the small collapses and the applause left behind in the rehearsal room this term stay a little longer in everyone's heart.

As for next term —

what roles, what stories, what strange and lovable characters will we meet?

Mulan Theatre — see you next term.