France – "Das Kapital. A book we haven't read yet" by Kepler-452
There is renewed international interest in Das Kapital. A book we haven't read yet, the work by Kepler-452 theatre company Ubu Special Prize 2023.
Already staged in Belgium, at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, in Switzerland, at LAC Lugano, in Germany, at the Festival Internationale Neue Dramatik in Berlin, it now arrives in France, guest of the historic Les Célestins theatre in Lyon.
Like on the previous ones, on this occasion too there is great curiosity and expectation: the five performances scheduled from February 4 to 8 (different times) are sold-out.
Written and directed by Enrico Baraldi and Nicola Borghesi, and produced by ERT Emilia Romagna Teatro, Kepler-452’s Das Kapital is the story of the encounter between a theatre company and a group of metalworkers who occupied the factory after the collective dismissal.
For several months, Baraldi and Borghesi have shared the struggles of the 422 workers of the GKN company in Campi Bisenzio who were fired with email communication. They listened and observed, trying from time to time to return to Marx's pages and establish a creative dialogue between Das Kapital - a classic of philosophical and economic literature - and what was happening in the factory, to a group of real people.
Three of these workers were involved in participating in the making of the show and are on stage with Nicola Borghesi: Iorio, a maintenance man, Felice, an assembly-line worker, and Tiziana, a cleaning worker. They interweave their personal lives with a reflection on the life that emerges when production suddenly stops – a reflection on time, about who owns our time, sells it, buys it, frees it, disclosing the contradictions of the economic and productive system we all are part of.
Das Kapital. A book we haven't read yet is presented in co-operation with the Italian Cultural Institute in Lyon.