Talking Coal Country with Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen

This is a special collaboration episode with Headline Books. Coal Country, by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, the creative minds behind the award-winning docudrama The Exonerated, delves into the aftermath of 2010’s Upper Big Branch mine explosion, highlighting the indomitable resilience of a small West Virginia community on a quest for justice. Featuring the musical talents of three-time Grammy Award winner Steve Earle from his album Ghosts of West Virginia, Coal Country powerfully combines the country/folk legend's "soaring emotional heft and superbly evocative string-picking" (The Hollywood Reporter) with actual first-person accounts from survivors and family members, immortalizing their stories of survival in this soulful yet resolute tribute. Coal Country’s world premiere run opened as a New York Times Critic’s Pick on March 3, 2020. Before an untimely closing in the face of the pandemic, The New York Times called it “devasting and heart-wrenching,” The Hollywood Reporter said it is “political theater of the most lucid, urgent, and necessary kind, given soaring emotional heft by Steve Earle’s songs,” and The New Yorker praised it as “an outstanding, outraged, life-filled documentary play.” Visit https://www.theatrewestvirginia.org/ for information on how to catch the show next week! The Big Time Talker is sponsored by Speakermatch.com