Protean playwright/director Adam Rapp and the Amoralists theater troupe recently collaborated on Ghosts in the Cottonwoods, an early Rapp play that the powerful Amoralist actors electrifyingly brought to life at Theater 80. Here we have a site-specific theatrical double-feature at The Gershwin Hotel: Animals and Plants, written and directed by Rapp, is about two drug runners snowbound in a cheap motel; Pink Knees, written and directed by the Amoralists' chief writer/director, Derek Ahonen, is about two couples in undersexed marriages, who decide to participate in an organized orgy in a discrete hotel room. I spoke with Rapp, whose continually growing body of work is nothing short of amazing.  His Red Light Winter, a Pulitzer nominee, will be filmed later this year, produced by Scott Rudin.
 
Hi Adam.  Can you tell me about your half of the evening.
 
It's kind of an existential nightmare, that's set in a motel room in Boone, North Carolina.  Boone is right in the valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Boone is a very strange kind of hippie town, mom and pops; Applachian State University is there.  These two drug runners from New York get snowbound in a blizzard. They're picking up a package of drugs, and, let's say, their loyalties are tested.
 
And there's a second part.  The play is divided into two parts.  A girl from town comes into the room.  The guys had met her earlier in the day.  So there's the three of them in the room.  She's looking for a way out of town.  She's 21, a drop-out student, and her husband is much older than her.  They're no longer living together. The husband lives at the motel; he's old, and a violent, magical creature.  And he shows up in an unexpected way.
 
I'm glad you're working again with the Amoralists.  I'm a big fan of  their work, and your collaboration on Cottonwoods was a marriage made in heaven.
 
I love those guys.  They're a total throwback.  They're workaholic, punk actors, who just want to make work and don't care about cigarette breaks.  They don't care about money; they just want to make exciting work.  I was so blown away by their physical and emotional equipment.
 
They have this fearlessness that reminds me of the early days of downtown theater, when Sam Shepard was first starting out, and doing shows at La Mama and St. Mark's Church.
 
I love their courage.  They have this amazing need to communicate, and to make work.  They don't do it with any hesitation.  At a lot of other theaters, there's a lot of worrying, and concern with the audience, and even with the content.  These guys just throw it up there.  They're not concerned about the audience. They're the riskiest guys I've ever been around.  The greatest sin in theater is boredom.  I just think that if people pay money to come to see something, you've got to try to give them something, and never let them be bored.
 
The Gershwin Hotel, 7 E. 27th St., (212) 868-4444. Previews Aug. 4, opens Aug. 10-29. Wed.-Sat. & Mon., 7 p.m.; Sat. & Sun., 2 p.m. $60.  Note: Only 20 audience members per show. Tickets available here.

Pictured above: Katie Broad and Williams Apps by Monica Simoes