"A brutally beautiful fable about how writers live to write—and then forget to live." —David Cote, Observer When Bella Baird, an isolated creative writing professor at Yale, begins to mentor a brilliant but enigmatic student, Christopher, 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 of Christopher. Brimming with suspense, Rapp’s riveting play explores the limits of what one person can ask of another. "An astonishing play…Flawless." —Jesse Green, New York Times "Rarely have form and function combined with such compelling revelation and persuasion as they do in Adam Rapp's haunting, unsentimental two-character play." —Jeffrey Borak, The Berkshire Eagle "Hypnotic and confoundingly dramatic…Will take your breath away." —Marilyn Stasio, Variety "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." —Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune Adam Rapp is an award-winning playwright, novelist, filmmaker, and director. His plays include Nocturne , Stone Cold Dead Serious , Finer Noble Gases , The Sound Inside , the Pulitzer Prize finalist Red Light Winter , and the book for the Tony Award–winning musical The Outsiders , cowritten with Justin Levine. His novels include Wolf at the Table , Know Your Beholder , and YA fiction that includes Punkzilla , The Copper Elephant , and 33 Snowfish . He has also worked in television and film, writing on such projects as Showtime's American Rust , HBO's In Treatment , and served as both writer and director on the films Winter Passing and Blackbird .