Rabe, David
1 primary work • 4 total works
Book 2
David Rabe is one of America's finest dramatists. In A Question of Mercy, he explores the controversial and emotional issue of euthanasia, delving deep into the ties that bind friends and lovers. Thomas and Anthony are lovers struggling with Anthony's final, exhausting battle with AIDS. Joined by their friend Susanah and a retired doctor, whose help Thomas has requested , they fashion a heartbreaking friendship as they work through the stages of a plan to relieve Anthony of his illness and his life. Rabe creates a passionate depiction of four people confronted with the reality of a loved one's fight with death, and a compelling dramatic event that poses the question: "What would you do?"
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
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 illusion-and the illusion of power-with force and insight.