Laughing through the crisis
- Source: Global Times
- [09:53 August 13 2010]
- Comments
A scene from the play Das Kapital. Photo: Courtesy of Shanghai Drama Art Center
By Guo Song
Collapsed businesses, greedy bankers and struggling employees suffering in a disastrous financial crisis - this is happening, not on Wall Street, but here, on stage, in China.
The Shanghai Drama Art Center will stage a new play Das Kapital from August 19 to 29 at the city's Majestic Theater, a play concerned with life in Shanghai under the influence of the global financial crisis.
This production is centered on an ambitious theater director who wants to stage a play named Das Kapital but cannot get enough people to invest in the show.
Struggling between ragged reality and dazzling desire, he creates a make-believe prosperity for the drama troupe, and begins making false claims about his financial success throughout the theater world.
The real play draws inspiration from Karl Marx's masterpiece on political economy, Das Kapital, a classical critical analysis of capitalism. The play tries to explain the process of capital operating in contemporary society by using Marxist theories.
"Most people find Marx's work difficult to grasp but the play is easily undertsood. It is a comedy based on real-life stories," said Yu Rongjun, the famous Chinese playwright and writer of Das Kapital.
Using words, songs, dance, videos and movement, the play interprets Marx's theories and presents its situations in a strikingly humorous style.
"But as well as laughter, we are expecting our audience to reflect on some of the social issues," said Yu, who has spent a year writing the play.
"The stories in the play are drawn from real cases in the finance industry, cases from China and foreign countries that happened during the financial crisis," said He Nian, the play's director.
One segment of the work, the Resignation Dance, for example, is inspired by the serial suicides (or attempts) at a Shenzhen-based factory belonging to a Taiwan company. In the dance, performers dressed as white-collar workers, throw resignation letters at their boss and walk away without looking back.
Some workers became stressed and suffered psychological problems and some chose to run away from the pressures by ending their own lives. "This piece of dance is designed to show an employee's final desperate resistance," said He, one of China's leading directors and a man who has become famous for highly entertaining productions.
In the Milk Dance workers carrying milk barrels on their backs are abused by their boss. The dance is a way of explaining Marx's theory of surplus value and the relationship between the exploiter and the exploited.
Dancing with the Wolf illustrates the relationship between humans and capital. In the play, capital is personified as a dangerous wolf. Financial operations are like dancing with a wolf - the stronger the wolf grows, the bigger the threat it poses to human beings.
"This piece is trying to discuss the meaning of money to us," said He. "Desires sometimes can become motivations, but they have to be kept under control."
