PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
David Rabe was born in Dubuque, Iowa. Drafted into the Army in 1965, he was stationed in Vietnam in a Medical Headquarters unit. Discharged in 1967, he returned to Villanova University to study theater under Richard Duprey, Robert Hedley, and Jim Christy. Many of his early plays were written during this period. The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel was his first play performed New York in 1971. It was followed by Sticks and Bones, The Orphan, In the Boom Boom Room, and Streamers. Other plays include Goose and Tom Tom, Hurlyburly, Those the River Keeps, A Question of Mercy, The Dog Problem, The Black Monk (based on Chekov), An Early History of Fire, Good for Otto, Visiting Edna, and Cosmologies. Four of Rabe's plays have been given Tony nominations as best play on Broadway. Other prizes and recognition include: American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, Drama Desk Award, John Gassner Outer Critics Award, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and The Elizabeth Hull-Kate Warriner Drama Guild Award. Over time he has increasingly devoted himself to writing fiction with three novels: Recital of the Dog, Dinosaurs on the Roof, and Girl by the Road at Night, as well as a book of stories, A Primitive Heart. In recent years, he has had stories published in New Yorker magazine and at Narrative online. His three children are Jason, Lily and Michael. He lives in Northwest Connecticut.
"""Skillful... Rabe's keen ear for how people talk, think, and behave makes these stories resonate."" -- Publishers Weekly ""One of the Best Books of 2022."" -- The New Yorker Praise for Dinosaurs on the Roof: ""David Rabe is... one of America's most celebrated contemporary playwrights. Darkly comic, painstakingly observed, Dinosaurs on the Roof raises all the right questions about life, sex, death, faith, and survival in an increasingly unforgiving world."" -- Pam Houston, Oprah Magazine ""Dinosaurs on the Roof shifts with great dexterity from comedy to pathos, from despair to poignant recollection; it is imbued with an off-kilter lunacy.... But Mr. Rabe's point is not to ridicule the hayseeds, at least not any more than he'd ridicule anyone else for being human. On the contrary, kindness and warmth suffuse the way he regards and inhabits his characters. Their fears, their failings, their myriad bodily weaknesses--hunger, thirst, lust, addiction, incontinence, fatigue--earn his compassion."" -- Laura Collins-Hughes, New York Observer Praise for Girl by the Road at Night: ""Rabe's portrait is multi-dimensional and engaging... he reveals himself to be as gifted a novelist as he is a playwright.... Above all, [Girl by the Road at Night is] a modern tragedy in which the war... becomes a metaphor for cruelty and injustice, for fate itself... a masterpiece of compression."" -- Philip Caputo, New York Times Book Review ""This is a sharp-edged boy-meets-girl story complete with longings of the heart but stripped, as Rabe's plays are, of the conventional war-story veneer."" -- Laura Collins-Hughes, Los Angeles Times ""From the gripping immediacy of Rabe's imagery, it's clear that the nightmare of Vietnam remains fresh with him... the story is told hauntingly..."" -- Boston Globe ""Returning to the subject matter of his 1970s Vietnam War plays, Rabe presents, in some ways, a simple story encompassing a small number of scenes and elements, yet it's rich with underlying ironies and complexities."" -- Library Journal ""Rabe never romanticizes his characters. This is no Romeo-and-Juliet story of unrequited love and desire. Instead, Whitaker and Lan play out their roles in both tender and brutal ways. A powerful statement about sex, war and identity."" -- Kirkus Reviews"
