David Rabe
David Rabe
David William Rabeis an American playwright and screenwriter. He won the Tony Award for Best Play in 1972and also received Tony award nominations for Best Play in 1974, 1977and 1985...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth10 March 1940
CountryUnited States of America
ideas sentences knows
I get a sentence, an idea, an image, and I start. I don't know anything beyond it. I follow it.
writing mean play
It was a roller-coaster process. For a long time I had no idea what I was doing. I wasn't writing with an outline. And, rare for me, I wrote scenes out of sequence. . . . I didn't understand the play when I wrote it. It was something I'd give in to. It happens to me periodically. I give over and write whatever comes to me and I don't know what it means and then I do. It's thrilling.
thinking play issues
. . . I do think that deep down, a lot of my work is about people trying to make reasonable accommodations of situations that are insane or absurd. . . . At first I thought the events had power in themselves, that I would just present them. I really wasn't aware of the things that finally became central issues to me - the shifting alliances, the way people hardly even know they've shifted. That part of [A QUESTION OF MERCY] is very familiar to me in terms of my other plays.
imposing learning thrill wants
Sometimes it's learning how the play wants to function rather than imposing something on it. For me, that's the thrill in directing.