David Rabe

David Rabe
Born	David William Rabe March 10, 1940 (1940-03-10) (age 71) Dubuque, Iowa, U.S.

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).

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 Catholic liberal-arts college.

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 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.

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).

Works

Plays

• Sticks and Bones (1971)

Tony Award winner for Best Play

• The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (1972)

Winner of the Obie Award for distinguished playwriting, the Drama Desk Award, and the Drama Guild Award.

• In the Boom Boom Room (1973)

Tony Award nominee for Best Play.

• Streamers (1976)

Tony Award nominee for Best Play and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play.

• Hurlyburly (1984)

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

• I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can (1983)
• Streamers (1983)
• Casualties of War (1989)
• The Firm (1993)
• Hurlyburly (1998)

Novels

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

References

1. ^ David Rabe Film Reference bio

External links

Biography portal

• David Rabe at the Internet Broadway Database
• David Rabe at the Internet Movie Database
• Hollywood.com
• Answers.com
• Filmography at The New York Times
• Encyclopaedia Britannica
• David Rabe on Charlie Rose
• David Rabe collected news and commentary at 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. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/11/24/081124crbo_books_lahr. Retrieved 16 April 2009.  "David Rabe's America"

Persondata
Name	Rabe, David
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	March 10, 1940
Place of birth	Dubuque, Iowa, U.S.
Date of death
Place of death