Time Out New York Interview with Adam Rapp and Billy Crudup

Fiction students are told to write what they know, but the savvy writer does at least two extra things: mix torn-from-real-life events with haunting, unsettling images and then cast a movie star (say…Billy Crudup?) as himself. In The Metal Children, opening this week at the Vineyard Theatre, prolific writer-director Adam Rapp (Red Light Winter, Kindness) […]

Fiction students are told to write what they know, but the savvy writer does at least two extra things: mix torn-from-real-life events with haunting, unsettling images and then cast a movie star (say…Billy Crudup?) as himself. In The Metal Children, opening this week at the Vineyard Theatre, prolific writer-director Adam Rapp (Red Light Winter, Kindness) lavishly embroiders one of his own experiences, an honest-to-God battle with old-fashioned censorship. And Tony Award winner Crudup plays the author’s alter ego, Tobin, who struggles with depression (as Rapp once did) while confronting those who want to strip his books from Middle American shelves.

Crudup was drawn to the self-destructive, often frustrating Tobin’s complexity. “Whenever I’m confused by someone—literally staring at the ceiling trying to work out his motivations,” he notes, “that’s when they’ve got me.” And Rapp wanted Crudup for obvious reasons. He says that when the actor’s name showed up on a list, “I pounced. He’s exactingly handsome—he looks like a leading man. His soul, though, is a mess”…

Read more

Artists

Adam Rapp

(Playwright and Director) An Obie-award-winning playwright and director. He is the author of numerous plays, which include THE METAL CHILDREN (Vineyard Theatre), NOCTURNE (American Repertory Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop), FASTER (Rattlestick), ANIMALS & PLANTS (A.R.T.), FINER NOBLE GASES (26th Humana Festival, Rattlestick), STONE COLD DEAD SERIOUS (A.R.T., Edge Theatre), BLACKBIRD (The Bush, London; Edge Theatre), GOMPERS, (Pittsburgh City Theatre), ESSENTIAL SELF-DEFENSE (Playwrights Horizons/Edge Theatre), AMERICAN SLIGO (Rattlestick), BINGO WITH THE INDIANS (The Flea), KINDNESS (Playwrights Horizons), and RED LIGHT WINTER (Steppenwolf, Scott Rudin Productions at Barrow Street Theatre), which was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He has published seven novels for young adults, including The Buffalo Tree (Front Street Books, 1997), which was struck from the curriculum at Muhlenberg High School in Reading, Pennsylvania in 2005, and Punkzilla (Candlewick Press, 2009), which was recently named a 2010 Michael J. Printz Honor Book. He is also the author of the adult novel, The Year Of Endless Sorrows (Farrar Strauss & Giroux, 2006), and the graphic novel, Ball-Peen Hammer (First Second Books, 2009). His playwriting honors include The Helen Merrill Award, The 2006 Princess Grace Statue, a Lucille Lortel Playwright’s Fellowship, and The Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. This summer he will direct a workshop production of his new play, WELCOME HOME DEAN CHARBONNEAU, at Seattle Rep.