Ever since Donald J. Trump’s first term, the Dutch theater-maker Walter Bart thought the president’s 1987 business-advice book, “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” was a key to understanding the current political era. He believed that the book — which advises businesspeople to exaggerate reality using “truthful hyperbole” and pursue winner-takes-all deal making — explained the polarized, sharp-edged dynamics of the moment.
But when Bart and his theater collective, Wunderbaum, decided to adapt it for the stage, he ran into problems. His inquiries about buying the rights went unanswered, and anyway, his collaborators didn’t want to pay for them if doing so would financially benefit Trump. So Bart opted for a riskier approach: eschewing the rights altogether.
The resulting adaptation, “Die Kunst des Deals,” which is in repertoire at the Schauspielhaus Bochum theater in western Germany, takes an absurd approach to the source material. It features roller skaters, dancing gold bars and a 10-foot banana — and it has become a critical and audience hit for the theater. Since its premiere in April, many performances have sold out. (The next is on Sunday, with more planned for 2027.)
For legal reasons, Bart said, “we knew we had to be careful with the text.” But, he added, “at a certain point we thought, ‘We’re just going to do this and see where it lands.’”
The musical offers a self-referential and frequently derisive take on its source material. The book, ghostwritten by Tony Schwartz, consists largely of banal descriptions of Trump’s everyday work life (mainly phone calls and business meetings), anecdotes from his biography and prescriptions for success in business (such as “Think big” and “Maximize your options”).
Bart, 48, said that the book’s celebration of hyper-capitalism and tolerance for dishonest behavior presaged what he saw as the manipulative nature of Trump’s politics and the tactics of the rising far right in Germany and elsewhere.
In writing “Die Kunst des Deals” — whose title is a variation, for legal reasons, of the book’s German title, “Die Kunst des Erfolgs,” or “The Art of Success” — Bart said he had relied on Germany’s Copyrights Act, which allows artists to parody or make a “pastiche” of another work, as long as they show that there is an “intellectual engagement” with the original.
“That is a lot of gray area,” Bart said, adding that he was a bit unsure about his legal exposure. “I don’t entirely know how it works.” (After a long pause, he said: “I guess that’s a not-good answer.”)
Although the show features some raucous musical numbers later on, its first hour consists largely of six cast members, all playing actors in a musical about Trump, sitting on chairs in front of a bare curtain. They read out emails and text messages in which they debate the project’s ethics and logistics — including the wrangling over rights.
While developing the project, Bart wrote an email to Schwartz, the ghostwriter, asking for permission to adapt the book and inviting him to collaborate on the musical, but it went unanswered. A request last December to the rights department at Random House, which published “The Art of the Deal,” was answered by an automated email promising a response “as soon as we can,” but Bart didn’t heard back until shortly before the premiere.
Copyright wrangling may not be the most obviously riveting subject for a work of musical theater, but the critical response to the show has been positive. A writer at the German newspaper Die Welt praised the show’s “blend of self-deprecating humor, fearlessness and silliness.” WDR, a public broadcaster, described it as “flamboyant, provocative and unusual.”
Johan Simons, the artistic director of Schauspielhaus Bochum, a vaunted state-funded theater whose performances have often featured the Academy Award nominee Sandra Hüller, said he saw the show as a “twist on the genre of the musical” that turns it “into a game.” He also said that he had not, “for one second,” been concerned about the decision not to buy the book’s rights.
Simons added that he had long been an admirer of Wunderbaum, a collective made up of a set designer and five Dutch actors, including Bart, because of their “brazenness.” Wunderbaum’s members, Simons said, “do what they want.”
Wunderbaum attracted widespread attention in Germany in 2024 when, while working at the Theaterhaus Jena in eastern Germany, the group staged a play about a scandalous, real-life episode in which a respected choreographer smeared dog feces onto a newspaper critic who had given him a bad review. Called “The Dog Poop Attack,” the performance was lauded by critics and won a place at Theatertreffen, an annual festival showcasing standout productions from throughout the German-speaking world.
Bart said the dog-feces show had emerged partly out of a desire to attract news media coverage to the Theaterhaus Jena, which was under the radar of many German outlets. “We thought this might be a good subject to make something about, because everybody was talking about it,” he said. “It worked.”
In a similar bid for public attention, Bart added that the production had contacted the Kennedy Center in Washington about performing the show there before its closure. But an email to Richard Grenell, who was the center’s president until this spring, went unanswered, Bart said.
Mona Vojacek Koper, a German American member of the “Kunst des Deals” cast who has a background in musical theater, said that she admired Wunderbaum’s willingness to make work “where you think, ‘How can you make a piece about that?’”
She added that it was rare to have a musical at a state-funded municipal theater in Germany, let alone one with elaborate props like an enormous movable banana that can be peeled onstage. “Germans are not that open to musicals,” she said. “They just think it’s a superficial form that is kitsch filled.”
The audience in Bochum at a performance this fall, however, seemed grateful for some levity amid the intensity of the news cycle. Abbi Schwartz, a 76-year-old dentist, said the show had done a good job of illustrating the parallels between “The Art of the Deal” and the current political moment.
Nadja Skrövset, 48, a doctor who has seen the show twice, said that the book’s celebration of aggression had also shaped the climate in Germany, pointing to the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany party. “Radicalization is happening everywhere,” she said. “I think it’s refreshing to be able to laugh about it and look at a giant banana.”
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