{"product_id":"9780881453720","title":"Essential Self-Defense","description":"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.\u003cp\u003e\"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\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"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\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Broadway Play Publishing Inc","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50062072807664,"sku":"9780881453720","price":10.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780881453720_p0.jpg?v=1784734155","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780881453720","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}