New Releases by Adam Rapp

It''s Christmas Eve: a Desert Storm veteran with a herniated disk and a 19-year-old runaway heroin addict share the holiday in a filthy, rundown squat on New York''s Canal Street. This unusual love story is grimly compelling, mixing gritty honesty with remarkable generosity and compassion, striking a delicate balance between the sweet and difficult moments in human interaction. "... a terrifically impressive British debut for new U S playwright Adam Rapp. Froggy and Baylis are two wrecked drifters in a New York squat ... BLACKBIRD could, in the hands of a lesser dramatist, be a crude mix of in-your-face grunge and sentimentality ... actually, the squalor here is both appalling and cryingly funny and Rapp has a brilliant ear for talk." -The Independent "There is a strange tenderness in Rapp''s writing that marks him out as one to watch. Rapp has genuine Gorky-esque talent and loves his characters as all-consumingly as they do each other." -The Guardian

A devastating, elegant, and gripping dissection of the American dream, Adam Rapp''s Nocturne signals a brave new voice in American theater. "Fifteen years ago I killed my sister." So begins Adam Rapp''s highly acclaimed play Nocturne, in which a 32-year-old former piano prodigy recounts the tragic events that tore his family apart. With a keen eye for human relationships and a deft ear for language, Rapp explores the aftershock of this unimaginable event. The father is so incapable of forgiveness he puts a gun in his son''s mouth; the mother so shattered, she deserts the family and eventually takes leave of her sanity altogether; the son--only 17 years old at the time--sets out for New York City. There, he seeks an uneasy refuge in books and reinvents himself as a writer. Across the decade and a half that follows he tries to cope with the ramifications of his own anguish and estrangement while making a desperate search for redemption.

While serving a six-month sentence at a juvenile detention center, thirteen-year-old Sura struggles to survive the experience with his spirit intact.

When Mike''s mother and sister go on tour with "Les Miserables, " Mike''s father and his new wife enroll Mike in St. Matthew''s Military Academy where, facing brutality and ignorance, he learns to survive.