THE STORY: Three lifelong friends take on management, the union and ultimately each other when a strike wreaks havoc on their working-class town. Along the way they have to negotiate mobs of angry first graders, bat-wielding bartenders, no-neck corporate shills and the North American Free Trade Agreement. Lines are drawn, crossed and double crossed in this raw, powerful and often hilarious story about loyalty, love and the crippling power of unbending principles.
“Presenting a play is a rare thing for me since I am a director and rarely a producer. This play is one I am proud to present.” —Mike Nichols.
“In a theater culture more likely to produce a play set in a well-heeled living room than on a factory floor, Joe Roland’s ON THE LINE, an unflinching portrait of a strike in [New Jersey], is a welcome anomaly. It smartly addresses the highly topical question of what happens to a company town when the company seems to have given up on it…the drama moves with the momentum of a well-told anecdote…Like Odets, Mr. Roland puts a frowning human face on labor unrest…” —The New York Times.
“Brutally funny.” —Newsday (NY).
“The actor-playwright Joe Roland’s peppery dialogue captures the infectious comic energy of masculine friendship…” —The New Yorker.
“ON THE LINE [is] a gritty and entertaining play about friendship and loyalty…One of the strengths of Roland’s play is it does not try to do—or to be—too much. And, what is more important, it has heart.” —Associated Press.
