David Rabe

David William Rabe (born March 10, 1940) is an American playwright and screenwriter. He won the Tony Award for Best Play in 1972 (Sticks and Bones) and also received Tony award nominations for Best Play in 1974 (In the Boom Boom Room), 1977 (Streamers) and 1985 (Hurlyburly).

Career

After leaving the Army, 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).

A collection of Rabe's manuscripts is housed in the Mugar Memorial Library, at Boston University.

Personal life

Rabe was born in Dubuque, Iowa, the son of Ruth (McCormick), a department store worker, and William Rabe, a teacher and meat packer.^[1] Rabe was married to actress Jill Clayburgh from 1978 until her death November 5, 2010. He has two children with Clayburgh, actress Lily Rabe and Michael Rabe. He has one son, Jason Rabe, from his first marriage.

Awards and honors

• 1967 Rockefeller Foundation Grant
• 1970 Associated Press Award, for a series on Daytop addict rehabilitation program
• 1971 Obie Award for distinguished playwriting for The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel
• 1971 Drama Desk Award for The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel
• 1971 Elizabeth Hull/Kate Warriner Award from Dramatists Guild for The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Streamers
• 1972 New York Drama Critics Circle citation
• 1972 Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Play in 1972 for Sticks and Bones
• 1972 Tony Award for Best Play in 1972 for Sticks and Bones
• 1974 Tony Award nominee for Best Play for In the Boom Boom Room
• 1976 National Institute and American Academy Award in Literature
• 1976 Guggenheim Fellowship
• 1977 Tony Award nominee for Best Play for Streamers
• 1977 New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play for Streamers
• 1985 Tony Award nominee for Best Play for Hurlyburly
• 2014 PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award Master American Dramatist^[2][3]

Works

Plays

• Chameleon (1959)
• Sticks and Bones (1971)
• The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (1971)
• The Orphan (1972)
• In the Boom Boom Room (1973)
• Burning (1974)
• The Crossing (1975)
• Streamers (1976)
• Goose and Tomtom (1982)
• Hurlyburly (1984)
• Those The River Keeps (1991)
• A Question of Mercy: Based upon the Journal by Richard Selzer (1997)
• The Dog Problem (2001)
• The Black Monk (2004)
• An Early History of Fire (2012)^[4]
• Good for Otto (2015)
• Visiting Edna (2016)

Screenplays

• I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can (1983)
• Streamers (1983)
• Casualties of War (1989)
• State of Grace (with Dennis McIntyre, 1990)
• The Firm (with Robert Towne and David Rayfiel, 1993)
• Hurlyburly (1998)
• In the Boom Boom Room (adapted from his play, 1999)

Fiction

• Recital of the Dog (1993)
• The Crossing Guard (novelization of the screenplay by Sean Penn, 1995)
• A Primitive Heart (2005)
• Dinosaurs on the Roof (2008)
• Mr. Wellington (children's book, illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker, 2009)
• Girl by the Road at Night: A Novel of Vietnam (2010)

References

External links

• David Rabe at the Internet Broadway Database
  
• David Rabe at the Internet Movie Database
• Hollywood.com
• Answers.com
• Filmography at The New York Times
• Encyclopædia Britannica
• David Rabe on Charlie Rose
• "David Rabe collected news and commentary". The New York Times. 
• Works by or about David Rabe in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Further reading

• Lahr, John (24 November 2008). "The Critics: Life and Letters: Land of Lost Souls". The New Yorker. 84 (38): 114–120. Retrieved 16 April 2009.  "David Rabe's America"
• Radavich, David. "Collapsing Male Myths: Rabe's Tragicomic Hurlyburly." American Drama 3:1 (Fall 1993): 1-16.
• Radavich, David. "Rabe, Mamet, Shepard, and Wilson: Mid-American Male Dramatists of the 1970s and '80s." The Midwest Quarterly XLVIII: 3 (Spring 2007): 342-58.