The life and struggle of Cuban leader Fidel Castro may just be turned into a musical exploration of his life at the Edinburgh Festival in August next year.
The Cuban leader led a controversial life that saw him being viewed as both a hero and a dictator. And now, the Edinburgh Festival is all set to explore events from that life in a song and dance extravaganza for the first time ever! What’s even more fascinating is that the musical ‘Fidel’ will include songs written by students from schools around Britain! The musical will be split into two shows; one covering the period between 1952 and the Cuban revolution and the second covering Castro’s time as a leader.
This original production is the innovation of Dr. Denise Braden, an associate professor at the University of Southampton Business School, who aims to give the Cuban’s side of the story through this en devour.
Dr. Braden’s main ambition in creating this production is to counteract the “bias” view of Cuban history given from “the US point of view” and give a different viewpoint to the story.
To reach her goal, she is launching a crowd funding campaign in the hopes of taking a condensed 90-minute version of the show to the Edinburgh Festival in August next year.
Speaking about the US’s one-sided version of Cuban’s history, Braden says, “The picture that is painted is not accurate. I donβt have a view on whether free market capitalism or socialism is best going to meet the needs of the people but we are not going to find out when one side is not allowed to tell its story.”
βItβs a distortion of the truth. Thatβs why I wanted to do the story of the cuban revolution.β
She even stressed on the fact that the production is not a hagiography but added that, βItβs probably a more sympathetic portrayal than he would get from Hollywood.β
So. if you’re heading to the Edinburg Festival next year, be sure to look out for the production. For more details click here