Radical Acts: Collected Political Plays

by Martin Duberman

Four inspiring, bold political plays that bring history alive as theater, from the Bancroft Prize-winning historian, cultural critic, and public intellectual.
BR> "Martin Duberman occupies a singularly important place in American culture." —Catharine R. Stimpson, Dean and University Professor, NYU

Best known for his acclaimed biographies of Paul Robeson and Lincoln Kirstein and his provocative books about the gay rights movement, Martin Duberman has also had a long-standing involvement with the theater that began early in his career, when his drama criticism appeared in the Partisan Review and Harper's
This volume includes four In White America , about the black struggle for freedom and human rights, which became a smash hit and was named the 1963 Best Off-Broadway production of the year; Mother Earth , which brings to vivid life Emma Goldman, one of the twentieth century's most famous revolutionaries; Posing Naked , the heartbreaking story of Smith College professor Newton Arvin, the most prominent (closeted) gay literary critic of his day; and Visions of Kerouac , which captures the beat era—from Kerouac's ambition-filled early years, crisscrossing the country with pals like Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, to the later years of isolation and alcoholism. This paperback edition makes these four politically charged plays available to a new generation.

Genres: Plays

296 pages, Paperback

First published September 16, 2008

About the author

Martin Bauml Duberman is a scholar and playwright. He graduated from Yale in 1952 and earned a Ph.D. in American history from Harvard in 1957. Duberman left his tenured position at Princeton University in 1971 to become Distinguished Professor of History at Lehman College in New York City.