Reviews

The PortFringe Theater Festival 2017 in Portland, Maine

" Adina Taubman has created a haunting, gripping masterpiece that is sadly as relevant today as it was when it was written in 2000. Through a series of interviews with survivors, parents, first responders, and reporters, Adina, by herself onstage, thrusts the audience right back into the immediate aftermath of the Columbine school shooting. Her choice of vignettes perfectly overlap to show us how divided opinions were at the time about why this happened, and what, if anything, could have prevented it. The use of the shooters’ own words from their diaries, as well as multimedia video and photograph overlays made it feel as if we were watching a documentary on television, and not watching one woman become each of these disparate voices. In the end, it’s the small details that remain with you long after you leave the theater. A parent requesting the section of the sidewalk where her son’s body laid for 3 days after he was killed. Blood from a victim traveling under the table to where a survivor was hiding. And the cloying feeling that nothing has been done in the interim to stop this from happening again and again. Kudos to Adina for creating this compelling piece - though a hard watch, it is well worth giving this weighty topic your time."

-- Kristen Peters, PortFringe.com - First Looks

Winner of the PortFringe 2017 Pulitzer Award for Excellence in Writing and The Meryl Streep Award for Excellence in Acting

Powerfully Drawn

Michael D. Jackson, Off Off Broadway Review, July 2007

Author and solo performer Adina Taubman has put together a marvelous one person show, A Line In The Sand, exploring the feelings of the Columbine township after the disastrous 1999 shootings. Two high school students opened fire, killing 12 classmates and a teacher before killing themselves on that fateful day one April eight years ago. Taubman, horrified by the news of the incident and wanting to find some way of doing something about the problem, flew out to Columbine and conducted interviews with numerous individuals and consulted the journals of the killers. The results of her research were assembled into her current play and play well it does.

Taubman is very good at creating her dozens of characters, but to ensure that audience members know exactly who is speaking, projected names appear on a screen above her head. There is also the aid of some multimedia photos, film, and a good supportive sound design which help give the program variety. The presentation was an engaging hour of material, with a shocking ending. There was an audible gasp from the audience as the long list of other schools where copy cat shootings have occurred since Columbine rolled on the screen. Taubman aims to keep the topic open for discussion and performances at the festival include a post-show discussion.

Taubman’s modest but effective show should and will be seen by many future audiences. She should immediately be booked on a high school lecture tour, because under the guise of entertainment, this writer/actress is doing something more important than most of us will do in a lifetime and it would be a waste for her monumental show to only be seen by a handful of patrons during the limited run of her performance at the Midtown International Theatre Festival.

A Line in the Sand deserves recognition as one of the best productions of the festival. It is a well directed, well acted and exceptionally designed production which overcomes the limits of festival conditions. The play rises up as an example of how excellence can be achieved simply and that the immediacy of live theatre carries with it a special power to possibly transform, but to definitely educate in a most interesting and profound way.

Winner of the 2014 Planet Connections Festivity Award for Outstanding Production of a Solo Show

Winner of the 2007 Midtown International Theatre Festival Award for Outstanding Production of a Solo Show

Winner of the 2009 Columbine Award for Best Stageplay at the Moondance International Film Festival

"There are many different reasons to see a play, though usually they fall into two categories: the desire to be entertained and the quest for knowledge. When a play falls into both we are doubly blessed. Sometimes, however, there comes along a play that goes beyond these audience-driven reasons and compels us to see it of its own accord, as if it were alive and called out, 'Come see me!' This is such a play.” — David Fuller, nytheatre.com

"Taubman has audacity and undeniable talent." — Show Business

"There's one diamond-hard truth in Adina Taubman's one-woman show, A Line in the Sand, which is that on 20 April, 1999, two students from Columbine High School shot and killed 12 classmates and a teacher before turning the guns on themselves. Over seven trips to the community, Taubman interviewed students, police officers and parents -- here she simply speaks the edited words of her stunned interviewees. Small-scale this may be, but heartbreaking it most certainly is. And therein lies encapsulated the unique potency of the Fringe." — Fiona Mountford, The Evening Standard — Edinburgh Fringe Festival

"This one-woman piece, written and performed by Adina Taubman, presents an astonishing insight, a snapshot, into the contemporary American psyche." — Dave Clements, culturewars.org

"Taubman's take is a preach-free, journalistic one — she takes no sides on any issue, instead letting those who lived through it speak for themselves. This makes A Line in the Sand a serene and haunting tribute to the losses incurred, and gives new life to the students and adults who were permanently silenced that day." — Matthew Murray, talkinbroadway.com


West Hartford News, January 29, 2009:  

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