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
Play
Excuse
Take
Hardest
Great
Room
Writing
Rooms
Escalate
People
Leave
Tension
Away
Tricks
Part
Plays
Together
Keeping

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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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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.
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A typical day for me is I'm writing when I'm not directing.
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Fifteen years ago I killed my sister.
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You can always count on the New York Times to cut your legs off.
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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 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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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 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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It's strange, people have asked me what my schedule is and what is my process like, and I can't even answer it.
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I think because my brother was an actor and I just saw how he struggled through, I guess I'm sensitive to it.
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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.
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Sometimes when I'm directing, the stage manager will have a good idea and that's okay with me.
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You have to escape to survive, as you must survive to escape.
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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.
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What I've learned in the last few years is that I am merely a storyteller.
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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 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 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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When I'm directing, I'm pretty much not writing, but when I'm not directing I am writing a lot.
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