Stephon Marbury: One Step Closer to Becoming Beijing's Most Beloved Foreigner With Stage Play

Current Beijing icon and former NBA star Stephon Marbury, whose basketball prowess has led to two titles for the Beijing Ducks (and honorary citizenship to boot), will now play himself in a multimedia stage play that begins its run next week in Beijing.

Despite its title and Marbury's prominent mug on the promotional posters, he's not the star of I Am Marbury. In fact, he only appears in a few scenes. Instead, the star of the show is another well-known foreigner, Mike Sui (who shot to fame in China last year via his viral video on English/Chinese accents).

The story revolves around two Chinese twentysomethings that come to Beijing to chase their dreams of becoming popular singers, and whose trajectories and timelines mirror that of Marbury's transition from a rocky NBA career to stardom in the CBA. The show features sports, music, multimedia and gratuitous appearances by CBA cheerleaders. Dialogue is in Mandarin (with bits featuring Marbury presumably in English).

The show's producer promises guest appearances from other notables, presumably folks like Yao Ming, and former Chinese CBA star and first NBA player from China Wang Zhizhi, but no guarantees there.

The show runs from October 1-11, nightly at 7.30pm at the Thinkpad Space at the MasterCard Center. Tickets are RMB 180 to RMB 1880 can be purchased online at Damai.com (Chinese only).

Image: Screen capture from Stephon Marbury's Instagram account, Damai