Director's Notes for The Line
What is the line? Is it something real, or is it the attempt to obtain what is unattainable? Is it a road map to success and accomplishment? To fulfilling a dream? Or is it nothing more but a rat race, an expression of human nature, a social conditioning? Caught in the middle of their own drama, the characters are in the disadvantage, their perspective is lost, while the audience is allowed the bird's eye view of the absurdity of the effort, passion, cunning and plotting that goes into their ridiculous struggle to obtain the FIRST PLACE in the line to nowhere.
This year, this run in fact, marks the 40th anniversary of Line's first production in 1967. Since then, it has been not only the longest off off Broadway production running, but one of the most staged plays all around the world. From America, to France, to Greece, to Australia this play seems to resonate with audiences around the globe. After forty years it does not feel dated or tried, and its dynamic and sharp quintolog leaves a director vast freedom of artistic interpretation.
Why would a 40 year old script seem fresh and relevant to today's audiences? Maybe, it's because the imaginary line might actually exist nowhere and everywhere in our day to day lives. In a society of images, where status, wealth, and fame are elevated to dizzying heights, we are constantly under a steady barrage to become the best, to become number one.
Fleming, Steve, Dolan, Arnall and Molly have been New Yorkers and Parisians; they have resided in Sydney, Athens and Rome. Their ages vary and social standings vary from production to production. Their lives have been staged as farce, as dark comedy, as absurd and everything in between. Now, that they exist in a midsize mid-American city like Lexington, do I, as a director have anything to add to everything that has been said already?
I choose to approach it as... a drama. Not that you will not find it hilarious. After all, it is the reality and the depth of our personal dramas woven into the absurdity of the circumstance that creates this richly paradoxical texture of life.