Rapp will direct his own work for 12 performances June 20-29 at the Off-Broadway troupe's downtown home. Betsy Aidem, Connor Barrett, Kerry Bishe, Guy Boyd, Mia Dillon, David Greenspan, Halley Wegryn Gross, Michael Shannon, and Katherine Waterston will star in the new work "about censorship in small-town American."

"The Metal Children," according to press notes, "follows the controversy created in a small town when a Young Adult novel about teenage pregnancy ignites heated emotions over abortion, religious beliefs and modern feminism."

The work will be presented as one of the Vineyard's Lab Productions, which are billed as "small-scale productions, modest in production values, which give playwrights and directors the opportunity to make changes on a nightly basis." The works are not open to the press for review.

Rapp made his Off-Broadway directorial debut with his own Red Light Winter (a 2006 Pulitzer Prize finalist) and has also staged his own Bingo with the Indians as well as Christopher Denham's cagelove and Julian Sheppard's Los Angeles. As a playwright, Rapp is known for such gritty dramas as Nocturne, Stone Cold Dead Serious, Finer Noble Gases, American Sligo, Blackbird, Essential Self Defense, Gompers, Trueblinka and Faster.

Tickets to Lab Productions are available only to Vineyard Theatre members, but a limited number of $20 rush seats will be released for sale to the general public two hours prior to each performance.

For more information call (212) 353-0303 or visit vineyardtheatre.org. The Vineyard is located at 108 East 15th Street.