With three new shows premiering over the next two weeks, theater lovers will have an early holiday treat. Andrew Chin explores how Shanghai’s English-language theater community grew from performing at shabby venues to selling-out performance halls.

In Urban Aphrodite’s upcoming production of the 2008 Edinburgh Fringe First Award-winning play “The New Electric Ballroom,” Christy Shapiro plays the youngest of three sisters caught powerlessly in her two older sister’s web of disappointment.

However off-stage, the New York native has been a dynamic presence in the development of Shanghai’s English theater scene.

The 39-year-old works as a film and voiceover actress but declares “theater is my real love.” She directed four plays this year and was one of the co-founders of East West Theatre, the longest-running English-language amateur theater company based in Shanghai.

“We didn’t even have props,” she recalls of the company’s early shows in 2006. “We had four chairs on each side on a stage. Both expats and locals were so hungry for English theater that they came.”

Early shows took place at art galleries and other unconventional venues produced by a passionate group hoping to bring the strong amateur theater tradition of their homes to Shanghai.

“Pretty much all of us have day jobs,” says East West Theatre producer Fiona Pollard. “Dramatic arts are a wonderful hobby and outlet for many people who aren’t dying to become professional but have that creativity within them and the capacity to enjoy it.”

Since its start, the company has averaged four shows a year and finished their season with a Halloween show revolving around Shapiro’s adaptations of a few Poe short stories. As they plan their upcoming 2014 season, Pollard has enjoyed watching the company develop into being a breeding ground that spawns new theater groups.

“We all share the same actors and crew but having different groups mean that people get to explore different projects,” the British native says. “Sometimes people ask why we all don’t get together under one umbrella but could you imagine how hard that would be? Having this diversity is better.”

The first group that East West Theatre spawned was Shanghai Repertory Theatre (SRT). The city’s first semi-professional English-language theater was founded by USC graduate Rosita Janbakhsh and debuted with 2009’s “A Christmas Carol.”

Their family-friendly holiday shows have become an annual tradition and their upcoming adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “Thumbelina” about a girl fending off marriage minded toads, beetles and frogs marks SRT’s return after taking last season off.

“It helped with planning the next stage of SRT,” Janbakhsh says. “With SRT we have the stability of having established a brand and infrastructure and are now picking up other challenges.

“For ‘Thumbelina’ we want to work with the space in a different way so we keep challenging ourselves artistically. There’s the constant marketing challenge of having all 10 performances sell out and the business challenge of getting more sponsors which is a consistent worldwide theatrical company challenge.”

SRT has been a trailblazer. It was the first company with an official venue (Ke Center for Contemporary Arts), introduced a two-week show and brought an English language adaptation of Yu Rongjun’s contemporary Chinese play “Drift” to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the world’s largest arts festival.

Community initiatives like the Creative Collaborators Competition, which solicits one-act play submissions with the winning show being produced, may be revived next year as SRT returns to the theater scene.

During their break, a pair of new companies has broadened the scope of theatrical offerings. Three days after arriving in Shanghai last summer, Houston native Ann James found herself directing a show for East-West Theatre.

By December, her company Urban Aphrodite debuted in Shanghai with an adaptation of David Sedaris’ “The SantaLand Diaries,” a sardonic account of his days working as a Macy’s department store Christmas elf that will be remounted in December.

“It’s so much easier to get things done here,” she says. “Shanghai is one of those places you can really experiment with low risk. We’re doing children’s theater and we’re starting subscriptions now which is insane.”

The company’s main focus in on producing award-winning plays bimonthly and they have made an impression with eight shows this year including classics like “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “Glengarry Glen Ross.”

With the success of her original solo show “Black Is the Color of My Voice,” Apphia Campbell established a different route for her company Play the Spotlight. The full-time singer is focused on producing original musicals like the upcoming “Holiday Hitch” that mixes contemporary and Christmas classics.

“When I was living in New York, I would go to Broadway and musicals and it was one of those things I always missed living abroad,” she says. “I’m trying to challenge myself to learn every aspect of the arts which Shanghai gives me that opportunity to do and I really wanted to do good quality musicals here.

“It was great to open here because the entire theater community is growing and extremely supportive,” she adds.

As the city’s English theatrical options increase, there have been some attempts at bilingual productions. The story of Hongkou’s Jewish community during World War II was told in “North Suzhou Creek,” which had a recent run at the Shanghai International Arts Festival. The Shanghai Contemporary Theater Festival has several multilingual shows on its current bill.

“Thumbelina” director Maya Wang has unique insight into the city’s different theatrical scenes. The Shanghai Theater Academy PhD student was one of the first foreigners to enroll and directs the Chinese-language theater group, E Theater, which staged the original bilingual piece “I Shanghai” this summer in London.

“We created a scene with a lot of misunderstandings because ‘I’ has the double-meaning of love but also me and people loved it,” the Swedish native says. “There are some bridges to cross. Language is very important but I would love to mix foreign students with Chinese students. I think that both can learn a lot from each other.”

Wang also teaches classes at the school and sees the daily dilemma her students face.

Most aspiring Chinese actors pursue film, television or commercial work. Wang sympathizes with their plight.

“Stage acting is not that big and there’s too little competition and too few independent theaters. There’s the Shanghai Drama Arts Center but we would need 10 of that for a city this huge,” she says. “The foreigners are creative because they will perform everywhere they get an opportunity. I want my students to do the same but you can’t make a living out of touring so that’s a problem.”

Despite the current predicament, Wang has seen positive results in a few recent productions. She has adapted two Swedish productions into Chinese and found a good translation works wonders.

“We had a Western acting style because I directed it and the story was Swedish but the actors could understand it since it was performed in Chinese and they could really enjoy it,” she says. “The same thing happened with an intercultural project our school did where we made Sweden’s most famous play ‘Miss Julie’ into a Peking Opera. We brought it to Sweden and although the audience knew little about Beijing opera or Chinese culture they could enjoy it because they knew the story. Suddenly, it became interesting.”

While bilingual productions may still be sometime away, bilingual audiences have been building for these English language shows. Although all of the English theater companies recognize there is plenty of room to grow, they have the distinct advantage of having an appreciative audience.

“Shanghai crowds are respectful and wonderful,” Shapiro says. “I think they’re so starved for this type of thing that they listen and are happy to be there.”

• The New Electric Ballroom

Date: November 28-December 8, 8pmVenue: Sasha’s, 11 Dongping RdTickets: 200-220 yuan

• “Holiday Hitch”

Date: November 28-December 8, 8pmVenue: Anken Green Rooftop Events Space, 668 Huai’an RdTickets: 150-180 yuan

• “Thumbelina”

Date: December 6-15, Wednesday-Saturday, 8pm; Saturday-Sunday, matinee, 3pmVenue: Ke Center for Contemporary Arts, 613 Kaixuan RdTickets: 180-220 yuan

(Andrew Chin is a Shanghai-based freelancer.)