In 1998, in Tiexi, Northeast China, all that was left of an old folk art theater was an old signboard, half a basket of coal, and a group of people who were about to break up.
The theater is about to close and be used for other purposes.
Everyone feels that this era no longer needs an old stage.
But Man Fenglian didn't believe it.
This woman, who has been singing on stage for half her life, took a gamble that no one expected - to sell 3,000 performance tickets in thirty days to revive the theater.
She has no funds, no resources, and she only has an actor who speaks faster than her brain, an old artist with a weird temper, a teenager who has not grown up, and a group of people who have their own agendas and are ready to leave at any time.
Just when she was at her most difficult, the man who had disappeared for twenty years came back.
Shen Changhe, the person who once understood her stage best, was also the regret she least wanted to mention in her life.
One clings to the past and the other believes in the future.
He wanted to tell her that times had changed; she wanted to prove that as long as someone was willing to sit down and listen, the stage would not fall down.
From selling the first ticket to reuniting a group of people; from running a dilapidated theater to finding their own new path.
In the cold winter of Northeast China, a group of little people who have been left behind by the times prove with one performance after another:
The old one is not a dream.
As long as there are people around, the play will go on.
