Plays
About
David Rabe is a Tony Award-winning playwright and screenwriter. Rabe broke out onto the theatre scene in the 1970s, and was one of the most lauded playwrights of the 70s and 80s. He is known for his dark humor, satire, biting wit, and surrealism.
Rabe was born in Dubuque, Iowa. He was drafted in the Vietnam War and spent two years serving in a hospital support unit. Upon returning home, he got his masters degree in theatre from Villanova University.
Rabe’s first theatrical successes came with his loose-trio of Vietnam plays: The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (1969); Sticks and Bones (1972), his first play on Broadway and a Tony Award winner for Best Play; and Streamers (1976), which was nominated for the Tony in 1977. He also received Tony nominations for In the Boom Boom Room (1975) and Hurlyburly (1984). He has adapted many of his most successful plays to film.
More recent works include: An Early History of Fire (2012), Good for Otto (2015), and Visiting Edna (2016).