http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25196441-2703,00.html
All-singing, all-dancing Karl Marx for the masses Rowan Callick, Asia-Pacific editor | March 17, 2009 Article from: The Australian DON'T Cry for Me, Freddie Engels. As capitalism treads water after hitting the global financial crisis iceberg, Marxists are in the mood for celebrating. The Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre is preparing to stage a dramatisation of Karl Marx's Das Kapital using elements of Broadway musicals and Las Vegas shows. This follows the recent launch in Japan of a manga (cartoon) version of the communist bible. Exploited salary-men gradually wake up to Marx's revelation that they are the sole source of capitalism's wealth. The first volume of Marx's work - whose most celebrated theme, something of a challenge for the choreographer, is the surplus value of labour - was published in 1867, with two more volumes released posthumously. Yang Shaolin, the general manager of the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre, is working with Fudan University economics professor Zhang Jun and others in the dramatisation. They have appointed as director He Nian, who staged a hit martial-arts spoof, My Own Swordsman. Joel Martinsen, in Beijing's Danwei website, quotes Yang as saying that in the past, it would have been almost impossible to conceive Das Kapital being adapted into a play with "main characters, major dramatic elements, and profound educational meaning". But in China today, such values no longer dominate the stage. Thus, says He, the theory of surplus value - while a serious issue - can be presented as "fun to watch". The new musical will be set in a business. At first, the workers learn that their boss is exploiting them, setting them on the path to discovering the truth of the "surplus value" theory. They respond in different ways. Some are happy to be exploited - the more toughly, the more they feel valued. Others strike, then rebel, but this destroys the company and makes them jobless. A third group pools its brains to open talks with the boss. Director He says that he will use the structure of the classic Japanese film Rashomon, directed in 1950 by Akira Kurosawa, with its switching between viewpoints, to stage the Marx spectacular. But very unlike the Japanese masterpiece, He will have a live band on stage, and his actors will sing and dance as well as speaking their lines. Despite this, the director will guard vigilantly against un-political-correctness: "Marx's theories cannot be distorted. We'll have Professor Zhang and experts from Beijing to act as academic advisors to ensure that this theoretical classic is performed correctly." East Press, the Tokyo-based publisher of the manga Das Kapital, has also produced manga versions of Dante's Divine Comedy, Shakespeare's King Lear and Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
