Background

David Rabe is an American playwright and screenwriter who is best known for his words Sticks and Bones and Hurlyburly.  He has earned many awards, some including a Tony for Sticks and Bones and an Obie award for The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel.  He is currently a college professor in Connecticut with his wife Jill Clayburgh and his three children, one of whom is Lily Rabe.

David Rabe was born in Dubuque, Iowa on March 10, 1940 to William and Ruth Rabe.  Rabe attended Catholic primary and secondary schools and then continued on to receive his bachelor's degree from Loras College, a liberal arts Catholic school.  Rabe then went on to Villanova University in Pennsylvania for graduate school.  But in 1965, he was drafted into the United States Army to fight the Vietnam War.  He fought in the Army for about two years and then returned to earn the rest of his M.A. from Villanova in 1968.

When he was in Vietnam, he refused to keep a journal because he didn't want to remember what happened over there.  However, some of his most renowned work came from his experiences of war.  While he was in Vietnam, he finished his first trilogy - three plays all based on his observations and experiences overseas.  They're called The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, Sticks and Bones, and Streamers.  These plays "depict the ruthlessness and horrors of battle and the effects of war on all those involved, combatants and noncombattants alike. His plays include tales of tormented war veterans, stories of the brutilization of American troops, and dramas of violence and prejudice within army camps."

Rabe didn't only write about the Vietnam war.  He also wrote plays such as Hurlyburly  and Those the River Keeps.  These plays are about Hollywood and what it is truly like.  Both of these plays wrote numerous awards and Hurlyburly was later created into a major motion picture.  Even though his most famous plays are about Vietnam, the writing of the plays, whether they deal with the disillusionment of Hollywood or the disturbing reality of what was the Vietnam War, both cut so deep into the human psyche and the human compassion.


Major works:

Plays

• The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel. New York: Viking Press 1971.
• Sticks and Bones. New York: Viking Press 1973.
• Streamers. New York: Knopf: Distributed by Random House, 1977.
• Hurlyburly. Chicago: Grove Press 1985.
• Those the River Keeps. New York: Grove Weidenfeld 1991.

Screenplays

• I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can. Paramount, 1982.
• Casualties of War. Columbia, 1989.
• The Firm. Paramount, 1993.

Novels

• Recital of the Dog. New York: Grove Press, 1993.
• The Crossing Guard. Westport, CT: Hyperion Press, 1995.

Rabe sitting at a coffeetable

http://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/bios/Rabe__David.html