INTERVIEW: Adam Rapp’s coming-of-age play arrives at 59E59
Photo: Carolyn Molloy stars in TUTA Theatre’s production of The Edge of Our Bodies by Adam Rapp, directed by Jacqueline Stone, at 59E59 Theaters. Photo courtesy of Anthony LaPenna / Provided by Karen Greco PR with permission.
Adam Rapp is a prolific writer in the theater world, and now thanks to TUTA Theatre and director Jacqueline Stone, his coming-of-age show, The Edge of Our Bodies, has come to New York City in a new production.
The play charts the journey of a 16-year-old who is trying to navigate the streets and neighborhoods of New York City. Over the course of the drama — a two-hander that plays like a one-person show — Bernadette travels from childhood to adulthood in front of the audience. Carolyn Molloy brings the central character to life.
“My company that I work with, TUTA Theatre, here in Chicago, our main focus of the work we do here is often dealing with plays that we feel have a somewhat unique or challenging structure to them,” Stone said in a recent phone interview. “[Edge], for the most part, [is] almost written in a style of prose and in some places poetry. I was really intrigued by that overall style of how to break apart the text that Adam put together and really bring that to life in a way that felt very rich and also for us here also felt very relevant at the moment in terms of the story. I also was really intrigued by the fact that we’re dealing with a central character who is only 16 years old and the artistic challenge of the work being handled by a young performer, or a fairly young performer, in their career and needing to find the ways to communicate with them to obviously be at the center of a very large project but an artist who is early in their career.”
Stone and Molloy went on a theatrical adventure to take in the full breadth of The Edge of Our Bodies. Along the way, they came to realize that Rapp’s work is essentially a love letter to New York City.
“The play takes place in all different locations between different modes of transportation from Connecticut to New York and then around the city,” the director said. “I grew up in New York, so reading this story the first time, I was taken back to that time period as a young woman. And I think for me there was also a pleasure in living in that geographic space and also that time in my life.”
The play has some of the expectant themes of a coming-of-age drama, including first love and a first job. However, Stone was most impressed by the universality of Bernadette’s story. She liked that the main character is trying to understand and discover the woman she’s turning into, both orchestrating the growing up and letting it occur organically.
“Who is the adult version of yourself that you want to be, but also in some cases who you are going to be,” Stone said. “And those two things are not always in sync with each other. Sometimes we have hopes and desires for ourselves, and they aren’t necessarily who we become. So the play takes place in that exact moment, that intersection in time where she is in this case wanting to be a short story writer, and the text that we’re hearing and seeing inside of this piece, it is the passages from her short story writing. And she’s also becoming an actress. She’s performing as well, and understanding where her talents lie as she’s kind of figuring out what her voice is. I think that part of the story is really intriguing and how the people in our lives around us influence the paths we end up going on by the advice they give us, by the feedback they tell us. She has adults around her, teachers around her, and some are very connected with her and giving her what we would consider solid life advice, and other important figures are extremely absent/ And she’s finding her way on her own.”
Stone was struck by Rapp’s level of detail about Bernadette and her journey in the Big Apple. When the director first came across the script, there were few blanks left in the plot, and a “lovely roadmap” was set for the theatrical project.
“We really still needed to take the time to find the parallels that made sense to us for our version of the show and for Carolyn’s version of Bernadette,” Stone said. “Although I had a lot of connection to the people and places in the story being from New York, Carolyn is from Illinois. She’s from the Midwest, and so when we approached it originally, we kind of figured out what were parallel locations. Geographically what would be the parallel school that this teenager would attend here, so we kind of gave her a web of reference. We did the Chicago premiere of the show two years ago with Carolyn. Even when we did it here two years ago, we had to think about how the play would feel relevant inside of Chicago.”
The director added: “I think the other really beautiful universal thing about this story is it really follows how one can feel when they are in a very large metropolitan city, how we can walk through streets and be surrounded by tons of other people but feel utterly alone. So when we look at how do we connect as humans with others and how are we isolated, and sometimes being a very busy and bustling area only makes us feel more alone if we’re not making connections with people. And that’s what the character goes through in this story.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Edge of Our Bodies, by Adam Rapp and directed by Jacqueline Stone, is currently playing 59E59 Theaters in Midtown Manhattan. Click here for more information and tickets.
