Exploring the Public School/Private School Divide in ‘Pipeline’

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Dominique Morisseau has one of the most penetrating voices to emerge from the last decade of American theater, combining poetic vernacular with a probing social conscience that brings to mind Arthur Miller and August Wilson. In her “Detroit Cycle” of plays, particularly “Skeleton Crew,” she used solidly classic forms to investigate moral ambiguity, and her “Sunset Baby” explored the conflicted legacy of the Black Power movement of the 1960s and ’70s.

Now Ms. Morisseau is measuring a different sort of generational divide with “Pipeline,” now in previews and opening Monday, July 10, in a Lincoln Center Theater production, which portrays a city public-school teacher who sends her own son to a private academy, with explosive results. The director is Lileana Blain-Cruz, who has collaborated memorably with the boundary-pushing playwrights Lucas Hnath and Suzan-Lori Parks. (Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, lct.org.)

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