The Sound Inside

When Bella Baird, an isolated creative writing professor at Yale, begins to mentor a brilliant, rebellious freshman student, the two form an unexpectedly intense bond. As their lives and the stories they tell about themselves become intertwined in unpredictable ways, Bella makes a surprising request…

Filled with tension and brimming with suspense, The Sound Inside explores the limits of what one person can ask of another.

Commissioned by Lincoln Center, Adam Rapp's play was first performed at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, later transferred to Broadway at Studio 54, and was nominated for six Tony Awards including Best New Play. It received its UK premiere at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, during the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

'The closest thing that the American theater currently has to a David Foster Wallace, Rapp can give you the head rush of sophisticated literary allusion and unreliable narrative trickery à la Dostoevsky, and yet talk of Plano, Illinois, and let you know that he knows exactly how it feels… a gripping stunner of a play'

'Subliminal, sublime'

'Stunning... hypnotic'

'A brutally beautiful fable about how writers live to write—and then forget to live'

'Both literary and rivetingly theatrical'

'A remarkable psychological mystery… exquisite tenderness'

'Real sensitivity and rapt intensity'

'Glimmering and hyper-literate... contained longing and emotional control... has a hypnotic power'

'A dense and intense piece of storytelling theatre... full of erotic charge... like watching a metaphysical version of David Mamet's Oleanna'

'Noir-ish and lean... enticingly metaphysical'

'Very stylish and well crafted... some genuinely thrilling moments'

'Thrilling... a twisty narrative that serves up a sucker punch... a taut and tense 90 minutes that will leave you speculating about meaning, motive, action, and consequences. Buckle up and enjoy the ride'

Adam Rapp is an award-winning playwright, director, novelist and filmmaker. He is the author of numerous plays, including Nocturne, Finer Noble Gases, Stone Cold Dead Serious, The Metal Children, The Hallway Trilogy and Red Light Winter, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

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