May 1st, 2002
at Rust Belt Books

     For the first installment of our annual May Day Performance Series, we offered up a lightly adapted version of Howard Zinn's rarely produced one-man play MARX IN SOHO.
     A professor, writer, activist, and certainly one of the most important leftist thinkers in America today, Howard Zinn is best known for his mammoth text A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.
     In this Marx play, Zinn presents us with the Father of Communism himself coming back from the dead with one purpose: "To clear my name!" Speaking directly to the audience in an hour-long filibuster, Karl defiantly propounds his views on the supposed triumph of modern-day capitalism as well as the many misappropriations of his ideology over the last 150 years.
     Sponsored by UB's Graduate Group for Marxist Studies, KARL MARX IN ALLENTOWN was performed to a standing-room-only crowd in the backroom of Allentown's Rust Belt Books with the following production team:

Karl Marx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Keith Elkins*
Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kurt Schneiderman*
Costume Designer . . . . . . . . . .  Maura Price*
Graphic Designer . . . . . . . . .  Ahmad Jordan*

* = members of the Subversive Theatre Collective