Jessica Blank

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Jessica Blank, born in New Haven, Connecticut, is an American actor, playwright, and novelist who has appeared in film, television, and theater. She has appeared in several movies, including The Namesake, The Exonerated, and You’re Nobody 'til Somebody Kills You, and the indies Undermind and On the Road With Judas (Sundance, 2007). She has worked in television, on The Bronx is Burning, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Rescue Me, Guiding Light, and One Life to Live. She is co-Artistic Director of THE FIRE DEPT, an Off-Broadway theater company.

Blank grew up in New Haven and Washington, D.C., and attended Macalester College and the University of Minnesota In 2001, she married the actor and playwright Erik Jensen.

Blank and Jensen co-wrote The Exonerated a play based on interviews they conducted with more than 40 exonerated death row inmates. In spring 2002, they co-directed The Exonerated at The Actors' Gang Theater. That production was nominated for five Ovation Awards and three NAACP Awards, won the Ovation for Best World Premiere Play, and has toured universities nationally. Bob Balaban's production of The Exonerated ran for more than 600 performances off-Broadway; toured nationally; was made into a movie for Court TV starring Brian Dennehy, Danny Glover, Delroy Lindo, Aidan Quinn, and Susan Sarandon; and was produced internationally in Dublin, Edinburgh, London, Japan, Mexico, and Italy. The Exonerated won the 2003 Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, Outer Critics Circle, Fringe First, and Herald Angel Awards. It has also received awards from Amnesty International, the American Bar Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and Death Penalty Focus. The Exonerated has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese.

Blank's first novel, Almost Home, will be published in October 2007 by Hyperion. She has also been published in magazines and journals including The Believer, The Dramatist, Another Magazine, and Theatre History Studies. Living Justice, Blank and Jensen’s book on the making of The Exonerated, was published in 2005 by Simon and Schuster.

References

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