"Developed at The Lark, Serious Play!, Theatre J, and NGTE. 'In 1919, Emma Goldman and J. Edgar Hoover were afraid of nothing ... except each other.'"--Playwright's website (jessica-litwak.com).
THE EMMA GOLDMAN TRILOGY by Jessica Litwak celebrates a life full of love, passion, mystery, revolution and deep self-debate between life and death. The three plays in this collection - LOVE, ANARCHY AND OTHER AFFAIRS; THE SNAKE AND THE FALCON; and NOBODY IS SLEEPING - offer a fresh take on Emma Goldman's life and allow the audience to be immersed in a vibrant world of revolution and passion.
"One night in 1901 a woman hides from the police for her alleged complicity in the sudden assassination of the President by a man she has never met. A play about the famous Russian anarchist the night she is arrested for the alleged complicity in the plot to assassinate President McKinley."--Playwright's website (jessica-litwak.com).
"Developed with The Lark and NGTE. The final piece in Litwak's Emma Goldman Trilogy, which follows Emma in her last four years as she passionately pours her heart into the fight against fascism on the active battlefields of The Spanish Civil War. This trilogy of plays explores the life and work of the in/famous anarchist Emma Goldman."--Playwright's website (jessica-litwak.com).
Throughout her richly storied life, Emma Goldman always took the side of the oppressed against capitalism and militarism and was always at the forefront of struggles of the powerless against society's strongest."--BOOK JACKET.
In 1889 two Russian immigrants, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, met in a coffee shop on the Lower East Side. Over the next fifty years Emma and Sasha would be fast friends, fleeting lovers, and loyal comrades. This dual biography offers an unprecedented glimpse into their intertwined lives, the lasting influence of the anarchist movement they shaped, and their unyielding commitment to equality and justice. Berkman shocked the country in 1892 with "the first terrorist act in America," the failed assassination of the industrialist Henry Clay Frick for his crimes against workers. Passionate and pitiless, gloomy yet gentle, Berkman remained Goldman's closest confidant though the two were often separated-by his fourteen-year imprisonment and by Emma's growing fame as the champion of a multitude of causes, from sexual liberation to freedom of speech. The blazing sun to Sasha's morose moon, Emma became known as "the most dangerous woman in America." Through an attempted prison breakout, multiple bombing plots, and a dramatic deportation from America, these two unrelenting activists insisted on the improbable ideal of a socially just, self-governing utopia, a vision that has shaped movements across the past century, most recently Occupy Wall Street. Sasha and Emma is the culminating work of acclaimed historian of anarchism Paul Avrich. Before his death, Avrich asked his daughter to complete his magnum opus. The resulting collaboration, epic in scope, intimate in detail, examines the possibilities and perils of political faith and protest, through a pair who both terrified and dazzled the world.
Emma Goldman has often been read for her colorful life story, her lively if troubled sex life, and her wide-ranging political activism. Few have taken her seriously as a political thinker, even though in her lifetime she was a vigorous public intellectual within a global network of progressive politics. Engaging Goldman as a political thinker allows us to rethink the common dualism between theory and practice, scrutinize stereotypes of anarchism by placing Goldman within a fuller historical context, recognize the remarkable contributions of anarchism in creating public life, and open up contemporary politics to the possibilities of transformative feminism.