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David Rabe

 
American Theater Guide: David Rabe
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Rabe, David (b. 1940), playwright. Born in Dubuque, Iowa, he was educated at Loras College and at Villanova University, then served for a brief time as a newspaperman. His first play to be produced was The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (1971), which described the disillusionment and death of a soldier in the Viet Nam War. It was produced by Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival, which mounted all his plays in the 1970s: Sticks and Bones (1971), The Orphan (1973), Boom Boom Room (1973)—later rewritten and retitled In the Boom Boom Room—and Streamers (1976). Rabe took a deadly view of Hollywood in Hurlyburly (1984), followed by the less‐popular Those the River Keeps (1994) and The Dog Problem (2001).

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American Author: David Rabe
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  • Born: March 10, 1940
  • Birthplace: Dubuque, IA

When David Rabe was drafted into the army and ended up serving in a hospital-support unit in Vietnam (1965-67), he wrote about the experiences, expressing the surrealism of the place and time through satire and grotesque humor. His first two plays, The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Sticks and Bones were a direct result. In the first, he shows the brutality of both sides, the Viet Cong and the American troops, and how the war affected both those who fought and those who did not. Sticks and Bones, which won him the Tony Award as author of the Best Play in 1972, dealt with the plight of a veteran unable to come to terms with his actions, and his homecoming. Streamers, the third play in his Vietnam trilogy brings the drama to an army camp in Virginia. The play, which was also nominated for the Best Play Tony, was made into a movie in 1983.

Rabe was nominated two more times as author of a Best Play nominee: for Boom Boom Room (1974) and Hurlyburly (1985). The latter play was also nominated for a 1998 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best New Play of the 1997 season. Among the screenplays Rabe wrote were The Firm (1993), Casualties of War (1989), and I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can (1982).

Rabe received his bachelor's degree from Loras College (1962), and a master's from Villanova University in Pennsylvania (1968). Rabe also wrote the play The Orphan (1979), a reworking of Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy, two dramas about disillusionment in Hollywood, Hurlyburly and Those the River Keeps, and Recital of the Dog (1995). He is married to actress Jill Clayburgh and they have two children plus one from his earlier marriage.

Most Famous Works

  • The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (1969)
  • Sticks and Bones (1971)
  • The Boom Boom Room (1974)
  • I'm Dancing As Fast As I Can (1982)
  • Hurlyburly (1984)
  • The Firm (screenplay, 1993)
 
Columbia Encyclopedia: David Rabe
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Rabe, David (rāb), 1940-, American playwright, b. Dubuque, Iowa; grad. Loras College (B.A., 1962), Villanova Univ. (M.A., 1968). Rabe served in Vietnam (1965-67) and his experiences and observations there inspired his first two plays-The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (1971, Obie Award) and Sticks and Bones (1971, Tony Award). Both realistically depict the brutality of war and its aftermath using dramatic situations, searing characterizations, and explosive dialogue. In his third wartime drama, the prize-winning Streamers (1975, film 1983), race and sex-based violence tears apart a Vietnam-era Southern army camp. Rabe's best-known play is probably Hurlyburly (1985, film 1998), a gritty and tragicomic exploration of Hollywood's aimless, dissolute, and shallow culture. His other plays include In the Boom Boom Room (1973, film 1999); The Orphan (1975), a version of Aeschylus's Oresteia; Goose and Tomtom (1982); A Question of Mercy (1997); The Dog Problem (2000), a dark comedy; and The Black Monk (2002). He has written the screen versions of his plays and other film scripts, e.g., for I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can (1982), Casualties of War (1989), and The Firm (1993). In recent years he has also turned to fiction, writing two novels, Recital of the Dog (1993) and Dinosaurs on the Roof (2008) and a book of short stories, A Primitive Heart (2005).

Bibliography

See studies by P. V. Kolin (1988) and T. S. Zinman, ed. (1991).

Works: Works by David Rabe
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(b. 1940)

1971The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Sticks and Bones. Rabe launches his theatrical career with the initial plays of his Vietnam trilogy. The first follows a soldier from boot camp to his death in a Saigon brothel; the second, a Tony Award winner, depicts a fictional version of TV's Nelson family coping with a son's return from the war. A Dubuque, Iowa, native, Rabe served in Vietnam, an experience that would have an impact on much of his work.
1974The Boom Boom Room. For his fourth play, Rabe departs from dealing with the Vietnam War for a character study of the disintegration of a young go-go dancer in a tawdry Philadelphia bar. Despite mixed reviews, it is nominated for a Tony Award for best play. It is revised in 1974 off-Broadway as In the Boom Boom Room.
1976Streamers. Rabe's final drama in his Vietnam trilogy, set in an army barracks in 1965, creates a microcosm of American society and attitudes of the time and explodes into murderous rage. It would be adapted as a film in 1983, directed by Robert Altman.
1984Hurlyburly. Set in a bungalow in the Hollywood Hills, Rabe's play chronicles the lives of four men, separated or divorced, who confront their disappointments in love and in their careers in the movie and television industries. Critics find Rabe's presentation of a world in moral chaos powerful, if sometimes painful to watch. Those the River Keeps (1994) is a prequel, exploring earlier details in the lives of some of the protagonists.

Wikipedia: David Rabe
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David Rabe
Born David William Rabe
March 10, 1940
Dubuque, Iowa

David William Rabe (born March 10, 1940) is an American playwright and screenwriter.

Contents

Personal life

Rabe was born in Dubuque, Iowa, the son of Ruth (née McCormick), a department store worker, and William Rabe, a teacher and meat packer.[1] He attended Roman Catholic schools in Dubuque, and graduated from Loras College, a small Catholic liberal-arts college located there. He began graduate studies in theater at Villanova University, but dropped out and was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1965. He served until 1967, spending his last eleven months of service in Vietnam.

Rabe has been married to actress Jill Clayburgh since 1979, with whom he has two children , one of whom is actress Lily Rabe. Rabe also has a son, Jason Rabe, from his first marriage.

Career

After leaving the service, Rabe returned to Villanova, studying writing and earning an M.A. in 1968. During this time, he began work on the play Sticks and Bones, in which the family represents the ugly underbelly of the Nelson family when they are faced with their hopeless son David returning home from Vietnam as a blinded vet.

Rabe is known for his loose trilogy of plays drawing on his experiences as an Army draftee in Vietnam, Sticks and Bones (1969), the Tony Award-winning The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (1971), and Streamers (1976). He has also written Hurlyburly (both the play and the screenplay for the film version), and the screenplays for the Vietnam War drama Casualties of War (1989) and the film adaptation of John Grisham's The Firm (1993).

An early champion of Rabe's work was the producer who first brought him major attention through productions at New York's Public Theatre, Joseph Papp. Papp called his productions of Rabe's plays "the most important thing I did at the Public.[1]

Works

Plays

Tony Award winner for Best Play
Winner of the Obie Award for distinguished playwriting, the Drama Desk Award, and the Drama Guild Award.
Tony Award nominee for Best Play.
Tony Award nominee for Best Play and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play.
Tony Award nominee for Best Play
  • Goose and Tomtom (1987)
  • Those The River Keeps (1994)
  • A Question of Mercy (1997)
  • The Dog Problem (2001)

Screenplays

Novels

  • A Primitive Heart (2005)
  • Dinosaurs on the Roof (2008)

Further reading

References

  1. ^ David Rabe Biography (1940-)

External links


This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

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American Theater Guide. The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. Copyright © 2004 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
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Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/.  Read more
Works. The Chronology of American Literature, edited by Daniel S. Burt. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
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