The Babylon Line

An electrifying new play by Tony Award–winning playwright Richard Greenberg, The Babylon Line opens at Lincoln Center Theater on December 5, 2016.

A thirty-eight-year-old writer from Greenwich Village, Aaron is painfully aware of his failures as an artist when his desperate need for a job forces him to commute along the Babylon Line to Levittown to teach. What awaits him is a classroom of varyingly unwilling students, some who attend because their preferred course was full, others who are attentive enough but sit silently at their desks—and all of whom have yet to set pen to paper. Over the course of the semester, Aaron’s adult pupils write increasingly more honest life accounts and stories, and cracks begin to appear in their small-town community. A particularly bold and troubled student, Joan, strikes up a rapport with Aaron that threatens to become something more, as the pair bond over their failing marriages and creative frustrations. In the end, we observe the life-changing effects of artistic expression as Greenberg maps out the rest of each of the characters’ lives, full of triumphs and newfound joy that can be traced back directly to those few weeks in a classroom in 1967.

Richard Greenberg’s intelligent, nuanced, and perceptive dialogue has been described by the New York Times as “exquisite . . . sparkling gems that [he] delivers with gratifying frequency.” One of America’s most loved and frequently produced playwrights, Greenberg has  wisdom that runs deep, and his humor and charm make his work destined to be read and performed for generations to come.