Rapp told Playbill.com that Red Light Winter, which played an Obie-winning run at the Barrow Street Theatre in 2006, will be produced for the screen by Scott Rudin. Rudin and Paramount Pictures produced the show's Off-Broadway run with Robyn Goodman, Roger Berlind and Stuart Thompson. Rapp, who is still working on the screenplay, said he would like to use the original stage cast — Gary Wilmes, Christopher Denham and Lisa Joyce — but no official casting decisions have been made. Rapp will direct the film.
Red Light Winter, according to press notes for the Off-Broadway run, "follows two men and a woman in very foreign territory. College friends Davis and Matt spend a wild, unforgettable evening in Amsterdam’s Red Light District with a beautiful young prostitute, Christina. They find that their lives have changed forever when their bizarre love triangle plays out in unexpected ways a year later in the East Village." The play was a 2006 Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Another of Rapp's plays, Blackbird, will make its screen debut March 12 at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, TX. Paul Sparks, who starred in the play's original run at the Edge Theatre Company, heads the cast of the film, which was directed by Rapp. The film's cast also includes Gillian Jacobs, Michael Shannon, Danny Hoch, Annie Parisse, Gary Wilmes, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Danny Mastrogiorgio, Dallas Roberts and Rosemarie Dewitt.
About the film, Rapp told Playbill.com, "It's sort of a prequel to the play up until the final night. The play, which takes place in one night, is also a part of the film, but the action pre-dates the play by about six months."
"Blackbird," according to the festival's website is described thusly: "An unlikely, junk-ballad-of-a-love story that follows a displaced veteran of the first Gulf War, and a 17-year-old Midwestern runaway amid the tough, lovelorn streets of mid-1990s New York City." For more information about the "Blackbird" screenings, visit http://2007.sxsw.com/film. Adam Rapp is the resident playwright for Edge Theater. His plays include Red Light Winter (Pulitzer Prize finalist, Obie Award), Blackbird (two Drama Desk nominations), Stone Cold Dead Serious, Nocturne, Ghosts in the Cottonwoods, Animals and Plants, Finer Noble Gases, Faster, Trueblinka, Dreams of the Salthorse and Gompers. His plays have been collected in "Stone Cold Dead Serious and Other Plays" and he has written seven novels. He wrote and directed his first feature film, "Winter Passing," starring Ed Harris, Will Ferrell and Zooey Deschanel, for Focus Features.
Playwrights Horizons and Edge Theater will collaborate to produce the Off-Broadway world premiere of Essential Self-Defense, which will begin previews March 15 at Playwrights Horizons' Peter Jay Sharp Theater.
