Essential Self-Defense

Adam Rapp has been the recipient of the Herbert & Patricia Brodkin scholarship, two Lincoln Center Le Compte De Nuoy Awards, a fellowship to the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, the 1999 Princess Grace Award for Playwriting, a 2000 Roger L. Stevens Award from The Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, a 2000 suite residency with Mabou Mines, the 2001 Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights, Boston's Elliot Norton Award and was short-listed for the 2003 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. His plays include NOCTURNE (A.R.T., Off-Broadway at NYTW), GHOSTS IN THE COTTONWOODS (Victory Gardens; The Arcola, London), ANIMALS AND PLANTS (A.R.T.), BLACKBIRD (The Bush, London; Pittsburgh City Theatre; Off-Broadway with Edge Theater), STONE COLD DEAD SERIOUS (A.R.T., Off-Broadway with Edge Theater), FINER NOBLE GASES (26th Annual Humana Festival of New American Plays, Off-Broadway at Rattlestick), FASTER (Off-Broadway at Rattlestick), TRUEBLINKA (Off-Broadway at the Maverick Theater), DREAMS OF THE SALTHORSE (Encore, S.F.) and GOMPERS (Pittsburgh City Theatre; The Arcola, London). His first anthology of plays, Plays by Adam Rapp, is published by Broadway Play Publishing. His new collection of plays, Stone Cold Dead Serious: And Other Plays, is available in a trade edition by Faber & Faber. His first feature film was Winter Passing, starring Ed Harris, Will Ferrell, and Zooey Deschanel, which he wrote and directed for Stratus Films. He is the author of the young adult novels Missing the Piano (Viking/HarperCollins), The Buffalo Tree (Front Street/HarperCollins), The Copper Elephant (Front Street/HarperCollins), Little Chicago (Front Street), 33 Snowfish (Candlewick Press) and Under the Wolf, Under the Dog (Candlewick Press), for which he was recently short-listed for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Recent directing credits include his plays TRAIN STORY at The Cherry Lane and the Off-Broadway premiere of BLACKBIRD, which was nominated for two Drama Desk awards. Projects include the graphic novel Decelerate Blue for the new imprint First Second, the adult novel The Year of Endless Sorrows, published by Farrar Strauss & Giroux, and his play ESSENTIAL SELF-DEFENSE. A graduate of Clarke College in Dubuque, IA, Rapp also completed a two-year playwriting fellowship at Juilliard. He currently lives in New York City where he is the resident playwright for Edge Theater Company. He was born in Chicago and raised in Joliet.