Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen to Develop Theater Piece With in Response to ICE in MN

The Guthrie Theater, in collaboration with The Public Theater, are partnering with documentary theater artists Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen on the development of a new work. Conceived as a direct artistic response to Operation Metro Surge, the presence of an estimated 3,000 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minnesota, the project addresses their actions in the Twin Cities, the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and Minnesotans’ collective response — events that upended the daily lives of thousands of Minnesotans, with major repercussions for the Twin Cities and the nation as a whole. Blank and Jensen, who have Minnesota roots and are actively developing the work on the ground in the Twin Cities, will create a documentary theater piece, told in Minnesotans’ own words, through firsthand interviews, in-depth research and engagement with affected communities. Still in active development, the project’s final form will evolve in the weeks and months to come.

Blank and Jensen’s documentary work focuses on directly impacted individuals at the heart of larger social justice issues. Their plays are created from interview transcripts and primary documents. They adhere to journalistic standards in preserving the language of the interview subjects and accurately representing the facts, while turning true stories into emotionally impactful and resonant works of art. They believe the medium of documentary theater is uniquely able to move audiences, create empathy and unmoor fixed preconceptions, creating tangible opportunities for change.

Blank and Jensen are investing time in the Twin Cities to listen, learn and conduct interviews with the people at the center of the story unfolding locally and across the state of Minnesota. They believe the nation needs to hear and understand the human stories at the heart of what’s happening in Minnesota, and they are dedicated to using theater’s enormous power to help tell these stories with the depth, care and attention they deserve.

Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen said, “Our documentary theater work is conceived as an act of service to the communities we interview. Our lives have been changed by what we’ve seen in Minnesota: both the organized brutality imposed on ordinary people and those people’s extraordinary response of care, protection, mutual aid and love. We are honored to have the opportunity to uplift the voices of the diverse Minnesotans impacted by and responding to this moment, and believe their stories carry great lessons for our nation as a whole.”

Blank and Jensen are a multihyphenate, married creative team. They have spent over two decades creating documentary theater that wrestles with the most urgent issues of our time while circumventing the false polarization that too often diminishes our national dialogue and blinds us to the human experience behind the headlines.

Their award-winning work includes The Exonerated, a play based on interviews with death row exonerees across the U.S.; Aftermath, the first major American theatrical work to tackle the impact of the Iraq war on ordinary civilians; Coal Country, based on interviews with survivors of the 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine disaster; The Line, a rapid-response documentary play based on interviews with New York City medical first responders at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic; and numerous others.