David Rabe


David William Rabe is an American playwright and screenwriter. He won the Tony Award for Best Play in 1972 and also received Tony Award nominations for Best Play in 1974, 1977 and 1985.

Early life

Rabe was born on March 10, 1940, in Dubuque, Iowa, of German and Irish descent, the son of Ruth, a department store worker, and William Rabe, a teacher and meat packer. He was raised in a devout Catholic family.

Career

Rabe was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1965 and served in a medical unit during the Vietnam War. After leaving the Army in 1967, Rabe returned to Villanova University, 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 seemingly stereotypical Nelson family when they are faced with their embittered and 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, the Tony Award-winning The [Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel], and Streamers, the latter of which was included in Harold Bloom's Western Canon.
He also wrote Hurlyburly, and the screenplays for the Vietnam War drama Casualties of War and the film adaptation of John Grisham's The Firm. Rabe also wrote a screenplay for First Blood for producer Martin Bregman with Mike Nichols interested in directing and the role of John Rambo written for Al Pacino, but it was not filmed because Pacino found it "too extreme" and declined to appear in it.
A collection of Rabe's manuscripts is housed in the Mugar Memorial Library, at Boston University.

Awards and honors

Works

Plays

Chameleon The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel Sticks and Bones The Orphan In the [Boom Boom Room] Burning The Crossing Streamers Goose and Tomtom Hurlyburly Those the River Keeps A Question of Mercy: Based upon the Journal by Richard Selzer The Dog Problem The Black Monk An Early History of Fire Good for Otto
  • ''Visiting Edna''

Screenplays

I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can Streamers Casualties of War State of Grace The Firm Hurlyburly
  • ''In the Boom Boom Room''

Fiction

Recital of the Dog The Crossing Guard A Primitive Heart Dinosaurs on the Roof Mr. Wellington Girl by the Road at Night: A Novel of Vietnam
  • ''Listening for Ghosts: A Novella and Four Short Stories''