Iron Age Theatre
Presents


Read an interview with Bob Weick of Marx in Soho.

Read an artcle about Bob Weick of Marx in Soho.

Karl Marx Agitates Old City (An Original Press Release about the Show.)

Agitating the authorities of the afterlife to clear his name, Karl Marx is sent to earth for one hour to make his case. Bureaucracies are the same in heaven as on earth though, and due to a clerical error, Marx lands in Old City Philadelphia rather than his stomping grounds in London. Not daunted, Marx launches into a passionate, funny and moving defense of his life and political ideas in Howard Zinn’s brilliant, timely play “Marx In Soho” at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

Fed up with the gloating of the right wing that “Marxism is dead” after the fall of the Soviet Union, and eager to reclaim his ideas from the distortion of Stalin’s brutalities and psudo-socialism’s repressions, Marx urgently uses current news and events to show how his ideas still resonate. “Why are you building more and more prisons,” he asks, “Yes, capitalism has triumphed. But over who?”

Playwright Zinn shows his characteristic gift at accurately humanizing but not sentimentalizing people most historians ignore at best or disfigure at worst. Zinn’s dialogue doesn't preach, rather it is full of mischievous humor. “I know Christ,” Marx says at one point. “He isn't coming back!”

Actor Bob Weick plays Marx .

“All those screens with all those pictures! You see so much but know so little! Doesn't anyone read history?” Marx asks during the play. American education,, America’s super rich ruling class, corporate mergers, prisons, and the media are some of the timely issues Marx takes on during the course of the play.

Howard Zinn is America’s leading progressive historian. Zinn is best known for his books “A People’s History of the United States,” and “The Twentieth Century.” Professor emeritus at Boston University, Zinn grew up in Brooklyn and worked in the shipyards before serving as an Air Force bombardier in WWII. Zinn was the chair of the History Department at Spellman College where he actively participated in the civil rights movement. He now lives in Massachusetts and lectures widely on history and politics.

Zinn is a champion of the notion that historical change occurs more through mass movements of ordinary people than through the wisdom and insight of so-called “great men.” His brand of “bottom-up” history has been reviled by political conservatives, but Zinn sees the attacks by the right on him as vindication of his own belief that history should be for everyone. “If history weren't important, people wouldn't get so upset by it,” he says. George Orwell said, ‘Whoever controls the past controls the future,’ by which he meant that history is incredibly important in shaping the world view of the next generation.” “Marx in Soho” is a brilliant introduction to Marx’s life, his analysis of society, and his passion for radical change.

Iron Age Theatre is one of the most critically acclaimed companies working in the Philadelphia area. At last year’s Fringe Festival the company presented Amiri Baraka’s incendiary play about race relations “Dutchman” at the African American Museum. The company was nominated for a Barrymore Award for Outstanding Ensemble for “Terra Nova,” at theCentre Theatre and recently produced Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” and the O’Neill classic “Moon for the Misbegotten.”