This week we have a great interview with Adam Rapp about his new play "Essential Self Defense."
Adam Rapp has a diverse career as a writer. He has written many young adult novels including "Missing the Piano," "The Buffalo Tree," and "The Copper Elephant," His first adult novel, "The Year of Endless Sorrows," was recently published. He has written many plays including last years Obie Award winning and Pulitzer Prize nominated "Red Light Winter." He also is the writer/director of two films "Winter Passing" and "Blackbird."
"Essential Self Defense" is about a misfit who takes a job as an attack dummy in a women's self-defense class, and soon he and his friends have to battle the darkness in their town. The play is described as, "a grim fairy take with generous helpings of rock and roll karaoke.
"Essential Self Defense" is playing at Playwrights Horizons through April 15th. For tickets click here.
You can listen to this interview and many other great features for free on Broadway Bullet vol. 107. Subscribe for free so you don't miss an episode.
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Broadway Bullet Interview: Playwright Adam Rapp on his new show, "Essential Self Defense"
BROADWAY BULLET: It's a busy week for playwright Adam Rapp as he has a movie out at South by Southwest and a new play that is going into previews and opening at the Playwright's Horizons. So Adam Rapp is definitely on a busy streak right now, and is here with us in the studio. How are you?
Adam Rapp: I'm good, I'm doing pretty good. How are you?
BB: Good. So what has the process been like for Essential Self-Defense?
ADAM: It's been really fun. You know, a lot of the actors are actors I have worked a lot with in the past, and who are friends of mine so in some ways it's been like a big party on a pontoon boat. It's different because I'm not directing it, and I've been directing a lot of my own work recently. I love Carolyn Cantor and her company so much and she's directed my work so wonderfully before, so I love working with her and her husband David – who's the set designer – it's really it does feel like a bunch of friends getting together and kind of throwing a party, which is the best way to do theater I think. It's not to say that it's not been professional and rigorous, but it's just that I feel like – it's so hard doing what we do – that it should be fun. So whenever I've been in rehearsals, it's really fun, there's always laughing. The play is really quite goofy, and out there.
BB: Yeah, what is the play about?
ADAM: It's about this guy named Yul Carol who lives in a small town in the Heartland – it's a made up town called Bloggs, USA. And he's recently been let go from his job at a television plant because he crossed out President Bush's face in a newspaper. And he can't get a job anywhere and the community doesn't know what to do with him. So he takes a job as a dummy in a women's self defense studio where he wears a big foam nerf suit where he gets beat up for hours by women. This woman, played by Heather Goldenhersh, her name is Sadie, she accidentally knocks his tooth out, and is afraid of everything, and is kind of an agoraphobic, and she is drawn to him because he is so strange, I think. So she wants to return his tooth to him and when they make that connection, they start to fall in love. So there's a strange love story amidst this strange arrangement of how the play starts.
BB: Was this at all inspired by the Dixie Chicks?
ADAM: No, no. No Dixie Chicks at all; but it was actually inspired by this woman, Christine Jones, who – she's a fairly well known set designer, she's doing the Duncan Sheik musical on Broadway right now.
