In ESSENTIAL SELF-DEFENSE, disgruntled misfit Yul Carroll takes a job as an attack dummy in a women's self-defense class and finds himself mysteriously drawn to Sadie, the repressed bookworm mercilessly honing her skills on him. Meanwhile, all's not well on the unassuming Midwestern streets of Bloggs: with local children vanishing at an alarming rate, our hero, his lady friend, and a motley assortment of poets, butchers, and punk librarians preparing to battle the darkness on the edge of town. "Adam Rapp is a latter-day Sam Shepard. ESSENTIAL SELF-DEFENSE is an entertaining tale of fear and loathing in midwestern America." -John Lahr, The New Yorker "The opening image of Adam Rapp's quirky-glum ESSENTIAL SELF-DEFENSE is wonderfully rich: Social outcast Yul stands center stage in a bright-yellow jumpsuit whose thick, rounded padding makes him look like a ridiculous superhero or a jaundiced Michelin man. Yul works in a self-defense class as the poor sap who takes karate chops from women such as Sadie. When Yul dons the suit, he acquires multiple shifting identities: victim, victimizer, hero, monster. As the ambiguous antihero of a stylized post-September 11 work about love and safety, Yul is a fascinating figure ... Rapp was born to wrestle words to the page and then to the stage; he has a love of language and a zest for his characters' lives." -David Cote, Time Out New York