“Don’t you wonder: why is it necessary to declare me dead again and again?” This is the question posed by Karl Marx in Howard Zinn’s witty and insightful “play on history.” The premise of this one-man performance is that history’s most famous, and oft-misrepresented, radical is resurrected after agitating with the authorities of the afterlife to clear his name. Through a bureaucratic error, however, Marx lands in modern-day Soho, New York, rather than his old stomping ground in London, to make his case.
Here Howard Zinn, nationally known for his best-selling book A People’s History of the United States, introduces us to the Karl Marx we never learned about in school—a most human of revolutionaries, driven by a deep passion for social justice. Along the way we meet Marx’s wife Jenny, his children, the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, and a host of other characters.
Zinn’s Marx in Soho rescues Marx’s ideas and fighting spirit for a new generation and shows how, far from casting him to the grave, our troubled times need Marx more than ever.
Howard Zinn is the one of the nation’s leading historians and champions of social justice. In addition to A People’s History of the United States, his many books include You Can’t Be Neutral On a Moving Train, which is also the title of a 2004 documentary on Zinn’s life, starring Matt Damon, Alice Walker, and others.
Brian Jones is an African American teacher and activist based in New York City. He has performed Marx in Soho for audiences nationwide since 1999.
