I feel that I am just a storyteller, and whether I am wearing the director hat or the playwright hat, it doesn't matter.

Adam Rapp

Categorized in : Directors Matter Hats

You have to escape to survive, as you must survive to escape. by Adam Rapp

You have to escape to survive, as you must survive to escape.

I don't know where the characters are going to go or what's going to happen. I know that something inevitable will happen. I know that they want certain things and they're in a certain room and they smell like this and they look like that. More often than not, an entropy creeps in that strangles me, and then the inevitable happens. I don't know if I have the ability to write an ending like My Fair Lady's, when everyone gets what they want after a few minor conflicts. If I tried to write that it would just be false. Or I'd have someone enter with a machine gun.

gun writing character

We only have so much time.... Time will kill you it really will... by Adam Rapp

We only have so much time.... Time will kill you it really will.

I grew up eating hamburger helper, macaroni and cheese, and drinking lots of milk, and looked at lots of cows; but I feel like a New Yorker now, I've lived here for sixteen years.

milk drinking years

Fifteen years ago I killed my sister. by Adam Rapp

Fifteen years ago I killed my sister.

fifteen my-sister years

I would hope that the staffs at juvenile detention centers and reform schools are carefully chosen so that there is a community of support and hope.

support community school

I suffer from and enjoy an incredibly vivid dream life. A lot of times there is a sort-of narrative and other times they are just funhouses of non-linear imagery and other scary stuff.

scary suffering dream

I don't put big concepts on my work, and it's all often about keeping actors in a room together and not letting them leave.

actors together rooms

You can always count on the New York Times to cut your legs off. by Adam Rapp

You can always count on the New York Times to cut your legs off.

legs cutting new-york

I find that more and more I'm trying to entertain myself when I'm working, because I know the work's going to go to a horrible place.

horrible knows trying

When I kicked in the first TV a nineteen-inch Magnavox with wicker speaker panels it felt like the most perfect thing I had done in a long time. And there's nothing like the feeling of perfection that will inspire repeated behavior.

perfection inspire long

Whenever I've been in rehearsals, it's really fun, there's always... by Adam Rapp

Whenever I've been in rehearsals, it's really fun, there's always laughing.

rehearsal fun laughing

In Chekhov, when people leave, a carriage is taking them away forever. The stakes are so high just for someone to make a simple exit. And now we have all this access to public transportation, automobiles and jets and the Internet; we're so easily distracted, but the world is still designed to destroy you. It just happens quicker and faster now.

simple forever people

I think there is a complicated side effect to overcoming evil in that we are forever changed by it. I think after we ingest some of the cruelty of the world, it takes years off of our lives, but it also gives us wisdom and a little grace, hopefully a sense of compassion.

compassion years thinking

I'm pretty obsessive-compulsive and I'm very fast. I tend to not write for a long period of time until I can't not write, and then I write first drafts in gallops. I won't eat right. I forget to do my laundry. I have a dog now, and I have to remember to walk him. When I write, that takes over and I can't do anything else. There's something exciting about that free fall, but then my life gets really screwed up. I've lost lots of relationships because of my having to ignore everything.

dog writing fall

I find auditioning to be a very illusive process, where actors come in with this really big result with no process, so it's a lie already at work.

actors process lying

It was like losing an important weight-bearing bone, and I knew I would spend the rest of my life trying to figure out how to walk the streets without it.

important weight trying

When I got inside, I just sort of stood there. There's nothing stranger than the smell of someone else's house. The scent goes right to your stomach. Mary's house smelled like lemon furniture polish and oatmeal cookies and logs in a fireplace. For some reason it made me want to curl up in the fetal position. I could have slept right there on their kitchen table.

oatmeal smell house

I appreciate good criticism and I think it's really important. I don't like it when it's consumer advocacy, like how you should spend your $60. Great criticism is a kind of literature. I've written some criticism, and I really enjoy it because I think it's important for people to know that theatre is vital. Criticism is really unevenly distributed in this town. Obviously the power of the Times is discouraging. It's killing new plays, demolishing one after another.

play people thinking

I feel that I'd rather know an actors' work, or have an instinct about them and sit down and have coffee with them, or I'll see them in something and I'll see if I can get along with them in some way, shape, or form.

down-and coffee way