Biography
Emma Goldman-Sherman is a playwright living in New York City. Her first theatre memory is Peter Pan presented in the round at Playhouse in the Park in Philadelphia where she clapped her heart out to save Tinker Bell. Since then she has been obsessed with the power of theatre to confer healing and agency on audiences.
Counting in Sha'ab, a play about a community in Iraq, was included in The 2015 ReOrient Festival of plays about the Middle East at Golden Thread in San Francisco and will become a podcast in 2019 directed by Omar Metwally for Playing on Air. Counting in Sha'ab will be produced as part of the UNESCO Literary Festival at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand 9/19 directed by Anson Ng.
ZEN & the Art of Mourning a Mother was a finalist for The Bridge Initiative's Bechdel Test Festival and was seen in the Philadelphia Women's Theatre Festival. FUKT was a finalist with Unicorn. WHORTICULTURE was a finalist with Campfire Festival. MAN & WIFE, one of the most recommended 2-handers on the NPX in 2018, was workshopped at New Circle Theatre Company, and Smith & Kraus published 2 monologues from it in Best of Women's Stage Monologues for 2018. Tamar (The Two-Gated City) was recently seen at Marble Collegiate Church, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, and in the Renegade N.O.W.Festival in Michigan. FUKT and Tamar monologues will be published in Smith & Kraus' Best of Women's Stage Monologues 2019. A monologue from Abraham's Daughters will appear in a Limelight/Applause anthology this fall.
Other work seen in NYC at Dixon Place, New Ohio, WP Theatre Playwrights Lab, New Georges, Manhattan Theatre Source, The Clemente, and Circle Rep Lab. Regionally her work was part of The Every 28 Hours Plays, a response to Ferguson that has been seen nationwide (The Goodman, ISF, ACT, Trinity Rep, etc) and other work at E.S.T. - the LA Project, Capital Fringe, Greenbriar Valley Theatre, The Hall Gallery in Kansas City and produced internationally in Zagreb, Sydney, Queensland, Sasebo, Seoul, Toronto and London. Emma is a 3-time semi-finalist w/Cutting Ball's Risk is This Festival with Why Birds Fly, Abraham's Daughters and Whorticulture which was short-listed with Owl & Cat in Melbourne and The Unicorn in Kansas City.
Emma earned an MFA from University of Iowa where she won the Maibaum Award for plays addressing social justice for Antigone's Sister and received a Jane Chambers Award for Perfect Women.
She is the Resident Dramaturg at 29th Street Playwrights Collective where she runs the WriteNow Workshop.
Member: LPTW and the Dramatists Guild.
