Quote

One of the tricks to writing great plays is to get people in a room together and not let them leave. You want the tension to escalate. Keeping them there is the hardest part, so you have to take away any excuse for them to leave.

Adam Rapp

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Adam Rapp
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: June 15
Film Director
Novelist
Joliet
Illinois
Great
Room
Writing
Rooms
Escalate
People
Leave
Tension
Away
Tricks
Part
Plays
Together
Keeping
Play
Excuse
Take
Hardest

More quotes by Adam Rapp

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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.
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I think, for me, when I direct my own work it's just an extension of the authorship.
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I think auditioning can be very reductive and I just hate how actors work really hard and most of them aren't going to get the job, and I hate putting them through that.
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What I've learned in the last few years is that I am merely a storyteller.
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We only have so much time.... Time will kill you – it really will.
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Man, that's the only kind of book I like – one that's so real you want to find out everything there is to know about the person who wrote it, like how tall he is and what kind of music he likes and whether or not he really went through all the stuff he was writing about.
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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.
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I feel that I am just a storyteller, and whether I am wearing the director hat or the playwright hat, it doesn't matter.
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I don't mind him not talking so much, because you can hear his voice in your heart the same way you can hear a song in your head even if there isn't a radio playing the same way you can hear those blackbirds flying when they're not in the sky
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I've never really felt good at the parties, but I have enough friends now that I feel social, I used to feel very antisocial, but I think the theater helps.
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I imagine a soul is a little perfect crystal egg floating in your chest. Somewhere deeper than where they put your heart. Somewhere so deep inside that the doctors can't find it with all their machines and microcameras.
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You can't run forever. There's only so much pavement that the road makers lay down. After a while, the highway quits going north and it just turns into sky. And you can't go anywhere in the sky unless you have a plane or some kind of rocket.
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I try not to write more than two or three, I try to just write one if possible, I write till the end at least a draft of a play or a novel but sometimes, I'll take a break for a couple weeks for a project that is paying me money like a television project which I try to stay away from just to stay financially ahead of the game.
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When I am directing, it is much, much, much, much, much different. I'm a much more practical person in the world, I show up on time, I am very rigorous about scheduling, and I am very focused. But when I'm writing I am just a big, irresponsible mess and I'm just impossible to get in touch with, and I don't spend time with friends.
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I've been living in Portland for five months and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I probably won't really know for years because that's how it works right? You don't really develop feelings about a place till you've left it. It's like a girl or a dog.
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You can always count on the New York Times to cut your legs off.
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I don't like the sort of hierarchical, totalitarian type of room a lot of directors can find themselves in.
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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.
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When it's just a few scenes and a couple of actors behaving in a room, I feel very confident with that.
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It's been hard for me to not write, and that's the only process I can speak to I guess, it's so compulsive and I need to do it all the time that sometimes I make myself not do it so I can actually tend to my life.
Adam Rapp