David Rabe is often referred to as a Vietnam playwright, largely because his reputation was established on the basis of work he wrote in the years immediately following his tour of duty in Vietnam. While the war certainly provided a catalyst for his...

David Rabe achieved national recognition in 1971 when two of his plays, The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Sticks and Bones, opened in New York within six months of each other. Productions of The Orphan (1973), Boom Boom Room (1973), and Streamers...

"Those the River Keeps," which runs in the New Stages series at the Hasty Pudding May 6-19, has been defined as a prequel to "Hurlyburly." But playwright David Rabe wants to make it clear that the play's action "interlocks rather than precedes what happens...

Even with a stellar cast under the direction of Mike Nichols, the 1984 New York production of "Hurlyburly" was a long, hard haul. Under far less favorable conditions, the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company has revived the play as part of its summer repertory, and...

Today is Saturday, March 10, the 69th day of 2007. There are 296 days left in the year. A reminder: Daylight-saving time begins Sunday at 2 a.m. locally. Clocks go forward one hour.Today's Highlight in History:On March 10, 1876, the first successful voice transmission over...

This is turning out to be a great season for actresses. Following Christine Ebersole’s acclaimed performance in Grey Gardens comes the hilarious Julie White in The Little Dog Laughed, now transferred happily from Off Broadway to the Cort Theatre. As Douglas Carter Beane’s super-agent with...

In the following essay, McDonough examines Rabe's depiction of men in his plays.

In the following interview, conducted on February 10, 1998, Rabe discusses his creative process, his use of symbolism, and aspects of individual plays.

In the following essay, Demastes and Vanden Heuvel contend that the works of Rabe and Sam Shepard embody a new direction in American theater, one that incorporates realism and absurdism to subvert “the bastion of traditional, strictly linear and causal realist theatre in an attempt to reveal the indeterminate and chaotic nature of the world.”