Poly Grand Theatre

The Nanjing Poly Grand Theatre opened in October 2014 as part of the Nanjing International Youth Cultural Centre designed by Zaha Hadid. The complex contains a large theatre and a smaller performance hall, providing spaces for orchestral concerts, musicals and other staged productions. Visiting ensembles have included the London Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Symphony and Czech Philharmonic. Its musical-theatre programme has featured The Sound of Music, The Bodyguard and Chicago. The two auditoriums differ in scale, with the smaller hall accommodating chamber-sized performances and other events alongside the main theatre's larger productions. Poly Culture operates theatres in dozens of Chinese cities and routes touring productions between them, and the Nanjing house belongs to that network. Musicals, dance, drama and orchestral programmes fill its calendar, among them the film-music concerts that have become a fixture of Chinese theatre seasons — scores played live to a projected picture, a format that has drawn audiences who come to no other orchestral event.