This article examines how the future is expressed and experienced in the theatre. Referring to the performance Karl Marx: Capital, First Volume by the German artistic collective Rimini Protokoll, the article exemplifies the relation between the past, the present and the future, showing how the different layers of time are interrelated. The performers involved are not professional actors but so-called ‘experts’, whose lives are connected to Marx's Capital in different ways. Based on the experts’ biographies, the performance not only offers a rereading of Marx's ideology, but also shows similarities between Rimini Protokoll's artistic and Marx's scientific approach, between the conceptualization of one's life and watching a performance in theatre.