Essential Self-Defense

Written By Adam Rapp
Directed By J.J. Marrs

May 14-30, 2009
Thursdays-Saturdays at 8pm

Performed at Birmingham AIDS Outreach

Misfit Yul Carroll takes a job as an attack dummy in a women’s self-defense class and finds himself mysteriously drawn to Sadie, the repressed bookworm mercilessly honing her skills on him. Meanwhile, all’s not well on the unassuming Midwestern streets of Bloggs: with local children vanishing at an alarming rate, our hero, his lady friend, and a motley assortment of poets, butchers, and punk librarians preparing to battle the darkness on the edge of town.

Featuring: Stephen Wade, Flannery Whaley, Scarlett Bradford, Billy Ray Brewton, Jason Carlton, Lee J. Green, Jack Heidt, Steven Lamphear, Jonathan Norris, Vallerie Paulin, and Bert R. Payne

Adam Rapp is an award-winning playwright and director. He is the author of numerous plays, which include Nocturne (American Repertory Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, The Almeida, London, The Traverse, Edinburgh), Faster (Rattlestick), Animals & Plants (A.R.T.), Finer Noble Gases (26th Humana Festival, Rattlestick, Edinburgh Fringe, The Bush, London), Stone Cold Dead Serious (A.R.T., Edge Theatre), Blackbird (The Bush, London; Edge Theatre), Gompers (Pittsburgh City Theatre, The Arcola, London), Essential Self-Defense (Playwrights Horizons/Edge Theatre), American Sligo (Rattlestick), Bingo with the Indians (The Flea), Kindness (Playwrights Horizons), The Metal Children (The Vineyard), The Hallway Trilogy (Rattlestick), The Edge of Our Bodies (36thHumana Festival), Dreams of Flying Dreams of Falling (The Atlantic), Wolf in the River (The Flea), The Purple Lights of Joppa Illinois (The Atlantic), and Red Light Winter (Steppenwolf, Scott Rudin Productions at Barrow Street Theatre), for which he won Chicago's Jeff Award for Best New Work, an OBIE, and was named a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize.