Das Kapital to be staged as a musical in China
Published 17 March, 2009, 22:30
Chinese producers are planning to stage probably the most renowned book on political economy of all times – Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, The Guardian reports.
How exactly the Chinese plan to adopt Marx’s theories for a mass audience in the form of a popular stage show remains a mystery.
The director He Nian has promised to unite elements from Broadway musicals and Las Vegas shows into an educational play, having underlined that “Marx’s theories cannot be distorted.”
The plot of the musical will be the story of a company, where workers suddenly realise their boss is exploiting them and gradually start to comprehend the theory of surplus value.
The premiere is planned for the beginning of next year.
Economics professor at Shanghai's Fudan University, Zhang Jun, has been recruited to ensure the new product correlates with the theories in Marx’s masterpiece.
Staging Das Kapital with “main characters, major dramatic elements, and profound educational meaning” only recently became possible due to a massive development of different styles in Chinese theatre, says Yang Shaolin, the general manager of the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre.
This is not the first attempt to adapt Das Kapital for the stage. In the 1930s a Japanese writer and translator wrote a play based on Marx’s major work and the result was subsequently translated into Chinese.
In 2007 a German theatre group also had an unsuccessful attempt which was described by Suddeutsche Zeitung as “something of a lecture … at times dry and boring”.
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