David Rabe has been a major voice and crucial force in American drama since 1971 when, in the midst of the Vietnam War, he startled the nation with The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel. The story of a native recruit's initiation into war, it is by turns brutal and hilarious. It won the young playwright an Obie and was hailed by The New York Times as "rich humor, irony, and insight." More than two decades later, Rabe continues to be one of our most compelling dramatists, acclaimed most recently for the Tony Award-winning Hurlyburly. In this, the first of two volumes of The Vietnam Plays,...
David Rabe has been a major voice and crucial force in American drama since 1971 when, in the midst of the Vietnam War, he startled the nation with Th...
This volume presents the text of a play that focuses on two gay lovers, one in an exhausting battle with AIDS, and two friends who join together to help the man with AIDS end his life.
This volume presents the text of a play that focuses on two gay lovers, one in an exhausting battle with AIDS, and two friends who join together to he...
The author of Hurlyburly again explores the struggle between hope and anguish in the human spirit in this story of two small-time jewel thieves united in a strangely unsettling friendship and the constant fight to prove to themselves and others how tough they are. But when their frantic scheming suddenly begins to betray them in mysterious ways, they find themselves trapped into a kidnapping and a murder over which they seem to have no control. Or do they? David Rabe's language creates and re-creates reality in constantly surprising ways, magically dramatizing the danger of the power of...
The author of Hurlyburly again explores the struggle between hope and anguish in the human spirit in this story of two small-time jewel thieves united...
The Black Monk has been called a singular "collaboration" between two writers: Anton Chekhov and David Rabe. Based on Chekov's novella of the same name, Rabe's brilliant stage adaptation tells the story of Kovrin, the young philosophy student who returns from Moscow to the estate owned by Pesotsky, where he spent his youth. Kovrin and Pesotsky's daughter, Tanya, soon fall in love and plan to marry. But the appearance of an emissary from the unknown -- the black monk -- threatens to have a devastating effect on all of them. Trouble starts in when Teresa tells her brother Joey that...
The Black Monk has been called a singular "collaboration" between two writers: Anton Chekhov and David Rabe. Based on Chekov's novella of the s...
Full Length, Drama / 11 m / Int. This volatile, incendiary drama premiered in 1976 under the direction of Mike Nichols, produced by Joseph Papp at New York's Lincoln Center. Revived in 2008 by the Roundabout Theatre, the third in author Rabe's quartet of "Vietnam Plays" is set in the Army barracks housing a group of young men, the "streamers" of the title: hapless parachutists who streak to certain death when their parachutes fail to open. This group includes Billy, a new recruit; Roger, a street-wise refugee from the ghetto; Richie, a sarcastic, bitter homosexual and their sodden,...
Full Length, Drama / 11 m / Int. This volatile, incendiary drama premiered in 1976 under the direction of Mike Nichols, produced by Joseph Papp at New...
Full Length, Drama Characters: 6 male, 6 femaleExterior set, platform stage.The author of Sticks and Bones and Hurly Burly turns his attention to the seedy underbelly of American life. Chrissy is a go-go dancer in the squalid "Boom Boom Room." Resigned to a life populated by denizens offering little more than drugs, sex and violence, she searches for love and beauty against this backdrop of nihilistic hedonism. Her desperate need to survive at any cost offers a glimmer of hope amid the glare of broken neon. Originally produced by Joseph Papp at New York's Lincoln Center.
"Compassion for...
Full Length, Drama Characters: 6 male, 6 femaleExterior set, platform stage.The author of Sticks and Bones and Hurly Burly turns his attention to t...
Longing and confusion. Hearts pounding, time ticking away. Early 1960s in a Midwestern town. Danny Mueller's working class life is one of fierce loyalty to childhood friends, Jake and Terry. But the bigger world is stirring once he meets Karen, back from college in the east and alluring because of what she knows, and unsettling for that same reason. The grip of Danny's past is intensified by his father, a German immigrant mourning a vanished world of lost prestige. For Pop the question is how to let go of a son and life he never quite had now that the future has shrunk to almost nothing....
Longing and confusion. Hearts pounding, time ticking away. Early 1960s in a Midwestern town. Danny Mueller's working class life is one of fierce loyal...
Good for Otto, which premiered in October 2015 at the Gift Theatre in Chicago, directed by Michael Patrick Thornton, is an unflinching portrayal of the world of mental illness and therapy. Drawing on material from Undoing Depression by Connecticut psychotherapist Richard O'Connor, it is a deeply moving look into the life of a number of patients trying to navigate personal trauma, including a profoundly troubled young girl, and one therapist, Dr. Michaels, who makes great efforts to help them, but is haunted by his own demons, and stymied by the financial obstacles of the...
Good for Otto, which premiered in October 2015 at the Gift Theatre in Chicago, directed by Michael Patrick Thornton, is an unflinching portraya...