Howard Zinn’s Emma

A Play About Anarchist Emma Goldman

This filmed performance of renowned historian Howard Zinn's stage play Emma dramatizes the life of Emma Goldman, the famed anarchist, feminist, and free-spirited thinker who was exiled from the United States because of her outspoken views, including her opposition to World War I. Filmed live in 2005 at the Byrdcliffe Theatre in Woodstock, New York, with Zinn in attendance, the play draws on Goldman's influential autobiography, speeches, and political writings to trace her emergence as one of the foremost radical intellectuals and dissident activists in America in the early part of the 20th century. Emma shows us why Emma Goldman was not only a remarkable historical figure but a woman whose fierce wit and political courage continue to resonate today.

"The first act of Emma, Howard Zinn's play about Emma Goldman, is a small miracle. Here is a drama that holds down the heroics, polemics and didacticism to which works about heroes and heroines are prone." - Walter Goodman, The New York Times