Emma Goldman-Sherman
New York, NY
Playwright, Dramaturg, and Teacher. I currently cooperatively run the 29th Street Playwrights Cooperative and teach playwriting via New York Writers Workshop
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Biography

Counting in al-Sha'ab will be part of the ReOrient Festival and Forum produced by Golden Thread in San Francisco this fall (2015).  Recently worked as a dramaturg at the Great Plains Theatre Conference.  I earned an MFA from the University of Iowa as Barbara B Goldman. My work has been produced at theatres in New York City (with Circle Rep Lab. Manhattan Theatre Source, The Women's Project & Productions and other theaters), Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Kansas City, London and Zagreb. "Perfect Women" won the Jane Chambers Award in the student category in 1997. I have had residencies at The Millay Colony and Ragdale. I developed two plays at WordBridge where I returned to work there as a dramaturg. My work has been published recently in Loyola University Chicago's Broad Magazine C(age)d issue, American Athenaeum, Adrienne Rich: A Tribute Anthology, The Manhattan Times, Broadzine, and is forthcoming in Smith & Kraus' Best Monologues for Women 2015.  

Plays

WHORTICULTURE
by Emma Goldman-Sherman

Live Girls in Pop-Soil! Lark is helped by her 2 friends to present her thesis for her gender studies class on how girls grow up today with social media, pop music, racism and rape culture. A confrontational Tragi-Comedy with very dark roots.

Cast:
LARK - An Asian American plays 20s - 8 INDI - A white American blonde plays 18 - 9 BELLA - An African American plays 18 - 9 all the actors as an ensemble play many other roles including POISONOUS FLOWERS, A HATER CHORUS and parents and teachers and friends UNIT SET 75 minutes
Abraham's Daughters

This play was recognized by Cutting Ball Theatre in San Francisco as a Risky Play runner-up in their Risk is This Festival 2015.  

(Father of Nations) Abraham returns to Israel to bury his wife and make aliyah only to discover the Palestinian family he created in 1947 suffering in the midst of the first Intifada (1993).  His American daughter and granddaughter struggle to recognize their family across cultural division and loss.

4 women, 1 man, unit set, two acts

 

Cast:
1 man seventies (could be played by many ethnicities like Hispanic, Greek, Slavic, Arabic, only played as white), 2 women late-thirties to mid-forties (one American white Jew, one Palestinian Muslim), and 2 young women in their late teens to early twenties (one plays white American Jew, the other Palestinian Muslim -- either could be cast Hispanic, Greek, Slavic, Arabic etc.)
Antigone's Sister

Ismene looks back on Antigone's tragic life and reconsiders her own actions.  A feminist ensemble piece for a cast of 5-8 women (many also play men) in verse with circus elements and collective action.  

Unit set. Antigone's Sister runs 90 minutes without intermission 

Cast:
5 - 8 women who also play men, circus skills
Significant Circus

A large cast romp through a fairy tale circus world where the princesses must learn to deconstruct their anti-feminist icons to navigate the realities of love.  With swordfighting and lesbians!

Cast:
See script - at least 10 actors
Why Birds Fly

For this play, I was named a RISKY PLAYWRIGHT by Cutting Ball Theatre in San Francisco in 2014.  They run a RISK IS THIS Festival, and I was honored to be recognized as risky.

A tragic comedy (or comic tragedy - your choice) on the nature of the patriarchy, two women try to put their lives back together after a terrible storm. 

Drawn from the Persephone/Demeter myth, Judeo-Christian tradition and the Beckett-esque physical clown-theatre, these hard-scrabbling women each seek a new beginning.  Grace wants to put her family back together, but Mary is desperate to break free.  

2 women, age is relative, one set - play is done in real time (optional interval) 90 minutes

Cast:
A woman barely old enough to give birth, and a woman barely old enough to be her mother -- or two fantastic actors who work well together, both women
ZEN & the Art of Mourning a Mother

A memory play where Angie's memories compete with her daughter Sarah's memories.  Sarah's need to control her mother's death causes her to berate Denise into understanding her own mother's life in a new way.  

5 women, 3 generations, all struggling with loss take a train from Philly to NYC.  Angie and Lois get on in 1963, Sarah and Denise get on in 1993 and Isabel gets on in 2003.  The train passes the Twin Towers in 1993 but they weren't there in 1963.  Only Isabelle in 2003 mourns them, and only she understands loss as a child can, and when she meets her grandmother, Angie, who is mourning her own mother in 1963, Isabelle might be able to save her own future.   

A play concerned with our shoes and our souls, a comedy with (t)issues.  

90 min no intermission unit set 

Cast:
5 women from @13 to late forties

Successes

MAN & WIFE, a Bi-Partisan Marriage under a 25 year Trump administration, was read at Dixon Place, directed by Kim Gambino with Amanda Ladd and Dan Shaked, 4/17, NYC

TAMAR, The Two-Gated City, my adaptation of two Bible stories about rape culture was performed as a staged reading at First Astoria Presbyterian Church in Queens NYC in April 2017, directed by Keisha Kogan, with Adrienne Williams, Lori Minor and Malikha Mallette in the 3 roles.  

Worked as a dramaturg on ten scripts at the Tenth Annual Great Plains Theatre Conference in Omaha, Nebraska!  And went back to dramaturg more at the Eleventh Annual Great Plains Theatre Conference.  Love it there!

Named a Risky Playwright second year in a row (2015) by Cutting Ball Theatre in San Francisco for the play Abraham's Daughters.  

Named a Risky Playwright in 2014 by Cutting Ball Theatre as a runner-up to the Risk Is This Festival for Why Birds Fly.