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 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 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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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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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 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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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 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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I began stealing a lot of ideas from other directors I had worked with.
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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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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.
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The rooms I tend to be in are pretty democratic and the best idea wins.
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I think I'm a little more daunted by when the machinery of the play is really huge.
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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.
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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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I dont see a lot of movies that portray the East Village as well as I think they can.
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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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Sometimes when I'm directing, the stage manager will have a good idea and that's okay with me.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Adam Rapp