David Rabe

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David William Rabe (born March 10, 1940) is an American playwright and screenwriter.

1 Biography
- 1.1 Personal life
- 1.2 Career
2 Works
- 2.1 Plays
- 2.2 Screenplays
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] 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] He attended Roman Catholic schools in Dubuque, and graduated from Loras College, a small Catholic liberal-arts college located there. 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 has been married to actress Jill Clayburgh since 1979. They have two children, one of whom is actress Lily Rabe.

[edit] 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).