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AFTERMATH

About the artists:
Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen are writers, actors, and directors. Together, they are authors of The Exonerated, a play based on interviews they conducted with over 40 wrongfully convicted death row inmates across the United States. Erik and Jessica co-directed the first production of The Exonerated at Tim Robbins' Actors' Gang Theater, which was nominated for five Ovation Awards and three NAACP Awards, winning the Ovation for Best World Premiere Play. Under Bob Balaban's direction, the New York (Culture Project) and London (Riverside Studios) production of The Exonerated ran for over 600 performances Off-Broadway, toured nationally, won Lucille Lortel, Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk, Fringe First and Herald Angel Awards, and was nominated for the Dramatists’Guild's Hull-Warriner Award and the John Gassner Playwriting Award. The play received awards from Amnesty International, the American Bar Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Death Penalty Focus, and Court TV. The Exonerated enjoyed sold-out runs in London and at the Dublin International Theater Festival and has been translated into Spanish, French, Italian and Japanese. An award-winning movie for Court TV, the film version featured Susan Sarandon, Danny Glover, Brian Dennehy, Aidan Quinn and Delroy Lindo.

As an actor Jessica Blank has appeared on film, TV, and in theaters throughout New York City. Television credits include The Bronx Is Burning, Law and Order: CI, Rescue Me, One Life to Live and Guiding Light; film credits include The Namesake (dir. Mira Nair), The Exonerated (dir. Bob Balaban), You’re Nobody Till Somebody Kills You (exec. prod. Spike Lee), On the Road With Judas (Sundance 2007) and Undermind. Her play Liberty City was produced in 2008 by NYTW (with Jessica directing), and was nominated for Lucille Lortel, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Awards. Her first novel, Almost Home, about homeless youth in Los Angeles, was published by Hyperion in 2007 and her second novel, Karma for Beginners, is forthcoming in 2009.

As an actor, Erik Jensen has co-starred in over twenty feature films, including Black Knight and The Love Letter. He stars as NY Yankee legend Thurman Munson in ESPN miniseries The Bronx is Burning, and will star in Virtuality, the new series by the creators of Battlestar Galactica. He has appeared on CSI, Law and Order, and Love Monkey, as well as Alias and Century City. Notable stage appearances include Arthur Kopit’s Y2K and Terrance McNally's Corpus Christi at MTC. He is at work on Main Street, an independent documentary about corporate farming’s impact on small-town America.

As writing partners, Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen’s work has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the Soros Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New World Foundation, and the Ethel and Abe Lapides Foundation. Their writing has been published in several magazines and journals, including The Believer, The Dramatist, Another Magazine, and Theater History Studies. Living Justice, their book on the making of The Exonerated, was published in 2005 by Simon and Schuster. Jessica's novel, Almost Home, was recently optioned for feature film by Jon Bon Jovi’s film production company, and Jessica and Erik are adapting the screenplay.

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