Nocturne

Fifteen years ago I killed my sister.

So begins Adam Rapp's highly acclaimed play Nocturne, in which a thirty-two-year-old former piano prodigy recounts the tragic events that tore his family apart.

With a keen eye for human relationships and a deft ear for language, Rapp explores the aftershock of this unimaginable event. The father is so incapable of forgiveness he puts a gun in his son's mouth; the mother so shattered, she deserts the family and eventually takes leave of her sanity altogether; the son -- only seventeen years old at the time -- sets out for New York City. There, he seeks an uneasy refuge in books and reinvents himself as a writer. Across the decade and a half that follows he tries to cope with the ramifications of his own anguish and estrangement while making a desperate search for redemption.

A devastating, elegant, and gripping dissection of the American dream, Nocturne signals a brave new voice in American theater.

Adam Rapp is the author of numerous plays and young adult novels. He lives in New York City.