Contemporary Education and Teaching Research 2737-4203 2737-4335 BONI FUTURE DIGITAL PUBLISHING CO.,LIMITED https://ojs.bonfuturepress.com/index.php/CETR/article/view/2048 1 2026 2026-07-31 Designing Cross-Level Aesthetic Education through Original Theatre: A Practice-Based Case from Shaoxing - Centred on the Development and Production of The Road of Mr. Lu Yun Li*,Shiliu Tong Drawing on the author’s original theatrical work grounded in Shaoxing’s local culture, this article takes the short play The Road of Mr. Lu as its principal case and incorporates the production model developed through parallel rehearsals of the adult and school-age versions of the campus musical Mulan. It proposes a pathway for aesthetic education comprising six interlinked stages: interpreting local culture; developing an original script; adapting it for different educational levels; coordinating rehearsal across primary, secondary, and higher education; facilitating post-performance dialogue; and feeding reflection back into subsequent practice. In the project, artificial intelligence (AI) is used to identify questions for historical verification, stress-test the causal logic of character action and plot, synthesise rehearsal problems, and support teacher and student debriefing. No AI-generated material is incorporated into the script or teaching until it has undergone source-based verification, team deliberation, and ethical and value-based review. At the same time, the play uses conflicts such as whether technology can reproduce human emotion and the affective warmth of civilisation to prompt students to examine the risks of alienation associated with AI and related technologies. The article proposes a cyclical model of AI-assisted creation, testing through live rehearsal, consolidation through educational reflection, and further creative refinement. Its differentiated tasks, process-oriented reflection, and multidimensional assessment indicators offer local universities an implementable, assessable, and sustainable framework for integrating ideological and political education with aesthetic education through original theatre across educational levels. Shaoxing local culture,original theatre,integration across primary secondary and higher education,aesthetic education,ideological and political education,artificial intelligence 10.61360/BoniCETRAIRC262020480103

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