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April 2, 2010

Marx actor urges 'free exchange of ideas'

One-man show ‘Marx in Soho’ sheds new light on misunderstood leader

By Mary Therese Biebel mbiebel@timesleader.com
Features Writer
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As an actor portraying the late Karl Marx, Bob Weick has faced some tough audiences. “I’ve walked in to find a group of men in the front row scowling at me with their arms folded,” he said. “People think they know what this guy is about, and they think he’s bad.” But when he brings the one-man show “Marx in Soho” to different venues, as he will next week in the Wyoming Valley, Weick hopes to see any tense arms unfold and furrowed brows relax.

“The premise of the show is that Marx has returned to Earth, to present-day America, to clear his name because he’s been vilified and demonized over the years,” Weick said.

“Many people, when they hear ‘Karl Marx,’ immediately make the association with governments that were wrongly called Marxist when they were totalitarian institutions structured in a way that was the antithesis of Marx’s ideals.”

The regimes of Stalin and Brezhnev that restricted individual liberty and punished dissent in the former Soviet Union were not what Marx envisioned, Weick said.

Rather, Marx saw a downside to capitalism, in which “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” and sought ways to change that economically.

To use a modern example, Weick said, Marx might well “respect Bill Gates for his work ethic and his drive” but would prefer an economic model different from the one that allowed Gates to become one of the wealthiest people in the world as chairman of Microsoft and donate millions of dollars to charity and scientific research through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

It would be better, in Marx’s viewpoint, if the economic structure allowed the people who build Gates’ computers and pave the roads over which they’re delivered and provide a host of other services to be doing so well economically that there’s no need for charity.

“It’s not so bad in the United States, where we do have a middle class that’s fairly comfortable,” Weick said, “but in other parts of the world the gap between rich and poor grows exponentially. Half the world’s population lives on $2 a day or less.”

The play was written by the late Howard Zinn, whose most famous work, “A People’s History of the United States,” begins by telling the story of Columbus’ arrival in the New World from the standpoint of the native Arawak people and works its way through the next few centuries of workers striking for better conditions, women resisting patriarchy and blacks struggling for civil rights.

Critics have described Zinn as writing about ordinary people, and in the play “Marx in Soho,” he depicts Marx as a concerned family man. “He was a loving husband and father, who saw three of his children predecease him,” Weick said. “The play’s a passionate piece. Imagine if you spent your life trying to right a wrong and suffered yourself in poverty as you attempted to do this.”

The play “makes Karl Marx human. It’s a fabulous production,” said Martha Pezzino, an associate professor of history at Luzerne County Community College who arranged an 11 a.m. Thursday performance there.

As a board member at the Interfaith Resource Center for Peace and Justice in Wilkes-Barre, Pezzino also scheduled a performance of “Marx in Soho” for 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Kirby Health Center on North Franklin Street in Wilkes-Barre.

“The show takes a different look at Karl Marx,” Pezzino said.

“Marx valued equality and hated things like exploitation abuse of workers and child labor,” Weick said, adding that Marx’s idea of communism was that it was “the purest democracy” and would lead to freedom.

“If there was a more equitable distribution of the fruits of labor, Marx said, you could be a worker in the morning, a poet in the afternoon and a fisherman at night.”

Weick, who works as a farrier shoeing horses in Bucks County, said he tries to live a simple lifestyle and balance his work with music and acting, in keeping with that Marxist ideal.

“I do appreciate his vision for a better world,” the actor said.

To anyone who believes Marx’s ideas were evil, Weick urges, “Be open to the free exchange of ideas. Come to the play and decide for yourself.”

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