About the Author and the Play
40 years ago a scared but cocky kid named Israel Horovitz, faced with the last-minute defection of his key actor, stepped into the leading role of “Line,” a play by that same kid — well, he was 28 but didn’t look it — in its first performance anywhere. “Stepped” is the right word, because “Line” was —- and is — a short piece in which a bunch of people in what the British would call a queue keep one-upping one another by stepping slyly in front of one another.
That was at LA MaMa, a small New York Theatre Club, when La MaMa was upstairs on Second Avenue, in November, 1967. The headline over the Post’s review read: WELCOME, MR. HOROVITZ.
His memories of the late 1960s and early 1970s: "Two things were certain in my life: 1) never enough money; 2) absolutely no sleep."
Israel Horovitz has come a long way since then. Talking about the changes everybody goes through in life, and the changes in his own life, he says: "If the man I am today met the man I was, there'd be a fistfight."
Since then, Israel Horovitz's plays have been translated and performed in as many as 30 languages worldwide. His best-known plays include The Indian Wants the Bronx, Rats, Morning, and Park Your Car in Harvard Yard, and Line now in its 35th season at Edith O’Hara’s 50-seat 13th Street Theater, where since 1972 Israel Horovitz’s “Line” has been playing three shows a week, 52 weeks a year, with hundreds, maybe thousands, of actors passing through its several roles. “ ‘Line’ has been there for 30-something years, Horovitz says it’d be nice to see it make 50.”
Horovitz has been awarded the Obie (twice), the Prix de Plaisir du Théâtre, the Prix Italia (for radio plays), the Christopher Award, the Drama Desk Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Award in Literature, the Elliot Norton Prize, and many others.
Vincent Simon, Director (France, Australia)
Israel Horovitz is America’s most produced playwright in France. In French Theatre history, no other American has had more play translated and produced in the French language. Eugene O’Neil comes just behind. The Line is therefore a personal unfinished business that I have always dreamt of directing.
The Line is a "fast and furious" type of play where actors and spectators should end up breathless! Suspense and humour is one of the most difficult cocktails to create on stage but it is also the most rewarding! When I first saw "The Line" I was exalted. I went back the day after and finally saw it four times.
David Martin, E On Stage
The Line is an absurdly satirical and entertaining play dealing with the human need to be first at all costs. There are a wonderful array of characters with all the frailties and weirdness imaginable.
Elizabeth Bentley, Drum Media
“The Line… is terrific fun and always unexpected. You don’t have to like theatre to like The Line – which is probably the highest compliment I can pay. It’s a knee-slapping hour of absurdist theatre that will have you chortling long after the performance is over.”
- Robyn Hills
You'll laugh, you'll cry (especially when the foot connects with the groin) and you'll beg for more ... GO SEE IT!