Political Theatre

According to Richard McGregor at the Financial Times, A few hours after the Communist party unveiled its new leaders in Beijing yesterday, another set of actors made their stage debut nearby in China's first theatrical adaption of George Orwell's Animal Farm, even though the Party congress displays all the rigid and hypocritical conformity so darkly satirised in Orwell's classic tale of a workers' revolution gone wrong. NPR's Rob Gifford just had a report noting the same irony. He also notes that the audience member he talked to seemed to have trouble following it, because like half the audience, she was text-messaging and talking on her cell phone during the performance.