BRATTLEBORO — Jerry Levy will perform his play, “The Third Coming: Marx Returns,” as a benefit for the Women's Freedom Center on Saturday, June 4, at 8 p.m., at the Hooker-Dunham Theater & Gallery.
For 10 years, actor, teacher, director, and activist Jerry Levy has had the good fortune to tour “Marx in Soho,” a one-person play about the life of Karl Marx written by Howard Zinn in 1999, according to a news release.
Levy has brought the play to over 80 cities and towns in the United States, Canada, and Europe, and in doing so, says he has learned more about Karl Marx than in the 40 years he taught as a sociology professor at Marlboro College.
In 2014, Levy embarked on a new project: he has written a companion play to Zinn's, called, “The Third Coming: Marx Returns.” For nearly two years, Levy toured and performed “The Third Coming” to a vibrant and extremely positive reception.
According to the news release, Levy says that, to him, it is “obvious that Marx's analysis of 19th-century capitalism is still very relevant to an understanding of the economic, cultural, and ecological crisis we are experiencing today.”
Marx has been not only a source of important ideas but has influenced communist, socialist, anarchist, and liberal social movements and political parties. His work has informed labor movements, the environmental movement, and the modern feminist movement.
Like other great thinkers, Marx significantly changed the ways in which we think and act in contemporary society. But who was Marx the person?
In “The Third Coming,” Levy continues to be inspired by the important and enigmatic historical figure humanized in Zinn's “Marx in Soho.”
Levy's play further explores ideas raised in Zinn's play about the relationships between Marx's ideas, his life, his connections to the women in his life, and his character.
According to the news release, Levy will perform this play as a benefit, with 100 percent of the profits going to the Women's Freedom Center, a local nonprofit committed to offering support, housing, and advocacy to survivors of domestic and sexual violence, as well as prevention and educational activities to help create a community in which violence isn't tolerated.