Adam Rapp Quotes & Sayings

When it's just a few scenes and a couple of actors behaving in a room, I feel very confident with that. — Adam Rapp

I had a sort of bad experiences as a playwright early on, when directors were putting in huge concepts that I didn't intend, or they were stylizing something that was compromising the play, so I started to think like, 'Well if I'm going to fight against this, I should learn how to direct.' — Adam Rapp

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

My Aunty Frisco used to say that a man who has a strong relationship with fire is capable of historical love, because the flames keep the passion flowing in the smaller parts of the soul. — Adam Rapp

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. — Adam Rapp

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. — Adam Rapp

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

I have to be entertained by what I'm writing, so a lot of my stuff has a goofiness or scatological quality. If these characters can entertain me, then I feel like I can deal with the darker or more serious stuff. — Adam Rapp

To do it right, you need three people," he explained. "One to hold em' up. One to pocket the cash. And one to wait in the car. Like the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Hang on a second," he said, cutting himself off. He pulled over to the side of the road, shifted into park, opened the door, leaned his head out and puked. It sounded like he was giving birth through his neck. — Adam Rapp

Film directing has perfected my theater directing. I think when I first started directing, a lot of my stuff was very lateral; I was afraid to have the actors' backs turned away, afraid to put them too far upstage, and I think once I did more things with film, I got more interested in composition. — Adam Rapp

When I'm directing, I'm pretty much not writing, but when I'm not directing I am writing a lot. It's strange: people have asked me what my schedule is and what is my process like, and I can't even answer it. I don't keep regular hours. — Adam Rapp

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. — Adam Rapp

Love,
Jamie
P.S. I can't believe you're dying. Please don't die. — Adam Rapp

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. — Adam Rapp

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. — Adam Rapp

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. — Adam Rapp

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. — Adam Rapp

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. — Adam Rapp

It's strange, people have asked me what my schedule is and what is my process like, and I can't even answer it. — Adam Rapp

That's when I started doing the Our Father again. I have no idea why. It just sort of poured out of me. And I recited it way too fast, like there was some sort of creepy priest in the back seat trying to damn me or something. But when I got to the part about the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, I said the Kingdom, the Power and the Gory. I even repeated the line, knowing that I was making a mistake, but Gory just kept coming out. It felt like someone else was making me say it, which is a pretty frightening situation when you're all alone and you've just hijacked your parents' car. — Adam Rapp

The biggest audience for Off Broadway is mostly coming in on a train - either Upper East Siders or Metro-North. I go to the theater, and everyone around me is over 50. How interested will they be in my kind of work? — Adam Rapp

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 — Adam Rapp

Sometimes when I'm directing, the stage manager will have a good idea and that's okay with me. — Adam Rapp

I don't see a lot of movies that portray the East Village as well as I think they can. — Adam Rapp

I guess I'm just afraid of whats going to happen. Because 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. — Adam Rapp

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. — Adam Rapp

I've never really felt that I've had the right hair cut, or had the right clothes. — Adam Rapp

I think, for me, when I direct my own work it's just an extension of the authorship. — Adam Rapp

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. — Adam Rapp

Things were pretty cold-blooded back in Rockdale.
That's when my arms were so pretty I could hold them up to the light and see the veins curling all clean and smooth like little blue branches. — Adam Rapp

I'm convinced that her obsession with Jesus was far more romantic than spiritual. I think she was actually attracted to him. I sincerely thought that one day while out on a grocery run, she would find some skinny, bearded, out-of-work Foote guy on the side of the road and, convinced that he was our anorexic Son of God, rescue him and head for some unincorporated Christian town in the middle of Illinois with a bingo hall and lots of roadside crucifixes, never to return. — Adam Rapp

I saw 'Six Degrees of Separation' because my brother was in it. It was a watershed experience. It was theatrical and scary, and New York functioned like a character. John Guare became a hero for me. — Adam Rapp

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. — Adam Rapp

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. — Adam Rapp

I pictured love as a big hairy giant with a dead fish in his mouth. Grizzly bear claws and his heart half out of his chest cause it's too big and the lungs have to fit. He never stops walking. Over mountains. Through the desert. On top of icy lakes. Past huge cities. And he hunts and kills for you and always comes back with plenty to eat. — Adam Rapp

The house was full of murmuring voices. I could practically feel each room getting choked with the hot breath of other people. — Adam Rapp

There must be some unwritten law that says about fifty people have to move into your house when somebody dies. If it weren't for the smell of death clinging to the walls, you might think it was your family's turn to host the month neighborhood potluck supper. A little beef and bingo at the Nugents'. — Adam Rapp

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. — Adam Rapp

I sat there for a moment and thought about my mom. It was her groans of pain that would get me the most. Sometimes they didn't even sound human. Sometimes she sounded like a cow, and for some weird reason, that made me think about hamburgers and I suddenly realized how starved I was. — Adam Rapp

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. — Adam Rapp

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. — Adam Rapp

I was born in Chicago, then I spent most of my youth in Joliet, Illinois which is about thirty minutes south, and I went to a military academy for high school in Wisconsin. Then I went to college, on a basketball scholarship to a small school in Iowa, so I'm like Mr. Midwest. — Adam Rapp

I hate the idea of sheltering kids from challenging books. It's just another form of conservative fear that promotes ignorance more than anything else. — Adam Rapp

When I came to New York, I was really awkward. I went to military academy for high school, so I didn't have the socialization that most kids do. When I got here, I was five years behind everybody. Talking to women was weird for me. — Adam Rapp

I think I'm a little more daunted by when the machinery of the play is really huge. — Adam Rapp

Back to his various modes of escape and survival. Because you have to escape to survive, as you must survive to escape. — Adam Rapp

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

I like to write about teenagers because it's such an uncertain and dramatic time. — Adam Rapp

When you're poor, you don't want anyone to know you're poor. — Adam Rapp

Mrs. Leene says I should think about people in the present tense.
"It forces you to take responsibility for them," she says. — Adam Rapp

I just love working with actors, and I love working with writers, working with designers. I feel that I am just a storyteller, and whether I am wearing the director hat or the playwright hat, it doesn't matter. And the rooms I tend to be in are pretty democratic, and the best idea wins. — Adam Rapp

My work is always more emotional than I am. My characters say things to each other that I get accused of not being able to say to my girlfriend. — Adam Rapp

I love plays that have musical moments. I'm not a big fan of musicals per se, but I love straight plays that have musical edges to them. I don't know if I will ever be able to structure a musical, but 'Finer Noble Gases' is as close as I've gotten. — Adam Rapp

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

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

Fifteen years ago I killed my sister. — Adam Rapp

10. You have to deal with stuff on your own and that's all there is to it. — Adam Rapp

At the funeral my stitches were itching like crazy, but it didn't bother me much because I was like totally tripping on the codeine they'd prescribed for the pain. They cremated my mom and stuffed her ashes into a pine box and put an eight-by-ten photo next to it. In the photo she was wearing too much makeup and it made me want to smash it with my fist. — Adam Rapp

I think because my brother was an actor and I just saw how he struggled through, I guess I'm sensitive to it. — Adam Rapp

When I work in the theater, you know you'll get this almost devotional, religious experience where you're breaking bread with everyone every day. — Adam Rapp

When you're making under-million-dollar films, it becomes so much about actors' availability. When you're using big actors for small films, you're in second or third position to the big monoliths. — Adam Rapp

Once I heard Dantly tell Welton that the Native Americans used to call that particular part of the morning "between the wolf and the dog" because the sky is so deep blue and spooky or whatever that you can't tell what's what. Is that a wolf on that hill or a dog? A man or a monkey? A saint or the devil? — Adam Rapp

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. — Adam Rapp

My life has been in shambles, like my personal relationships, my laundry, paying bills now I have someone who pays my bills and it's always been a challenge because it overwhelms me. — Adam Rapp

I began stealing a lot of ideas from other directors I had worked with. — Adam Rapp

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

I don't like the sort of hierarchical, totalitarian type of room a lot of directors can find themselves in. — Adam Rapp

There was a kind of physical anarchy that dominated most of my younger life. I was always too skinny, not hairy enough, my voice jumped around. It was a thing that drove me away from towel lines in gym class. — Adam Rapp

It was at that moment that I came to the conclusion that there is some link between plants and loneliness. — Adam Rapp

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. — Adam Rapp

On top of everything else, Boobie's got the clap. — Adam Rapp

I was a jock in college and high school, but I didn't hang out with the jocks. I was sort of a nerd who didn't look like a nerd. I never really fit into any social set. — Adam Rapp

After his rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner," Welton just stared straight ahead at the alter as if he were waiting for Jesus to climb down off the cross and escape with him. They would load up in Dantly's Skylark and the three of them would go score some Ex in Cedar Rapids. Jesus would like totally ride shotgun and scout for cops. — Adam Rapp

No one answered. You could hear the light buzzing over us. I love that sound. It means school isn't working, that the teachers are losing the battle. — Adam Rapp

Some of the greatest works of theater, from Chekov's work to modern playwrights', consist of just a few people in a room with no one leaving. — Adam Rapp

A typical day for me is I'm writing when I'm not directing. — Adam Rapp

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. — Adam Rapp

I was so in love I went into my room and drank half a bottle of Robitussin. — Adam Rapp

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. — Adam Rapp

What I've learned in the last few years is that I am merely a storyteller. — Adam Rapp