The Public Theater kicked off its world-premiere online run of The Line via live stream on YouTube and its website July 8. Available free of charge through August 4, the new documentary play, co-written by Coal Country writers Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, is based on the first-person accounts of New York City’s first responders during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Directed by Blank, The Line features a cast made up of Santino Fontana, Arjun Gupta, John Ortiz, Alison Pill, Nicholas Pinnock, Jamey Sheridan, and Lorraine Toussaint.
Read reviews for the virtual production below.
Houston Press (Jessica Goldman)
The New York Times (Jesse Green)
Theater News Online (Jeremy Gerard)
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The Line features original music composition by Aimee Mann, and Janelle Caso serves as production stage manager.
“In spring 2020, we conducted anonymous interviews with NYC frontline medical workers battling the COVID-19 virus,” shared Blank and Jensen in an earlier statement. “Through these interviews, we began to see care as a radical response to institutionalized violence and the systems that perpetuate it. Created from quarantine in ‘rapid response’ to this national emergency, The Line presents a fundamental redefinition of what it means to protect and serve, examining the fault lines in our system through the words of the brave people who show up every day to care for us all.”
