About the Play:

Streamers has long been a favourite of acting teachers for male/male scenes.

Streamers is a full-length drama by David Rabe. From the author of HurlyBurly and In the Boom Boom Room, four young recruits and two veterans in an army barracks struggle to cope with their racial, homophobic and other personal torments and insensitivities as they wonder if they will ever see combat in Vietnam.

Streamers is an unflinching exploration of the turmoil and confusion facing young men threatened by forces beyond their control. In this powerful American masterpiece, four young soldiers fresh from boot camp wait anxiously in a 1965 Virginia Army barracks, watching the Vietnam conflict escalate. They are the "streamers" of the title: hapless parachutists who streak to certain death when their parachutes fail to open. As they struggle to make sense of their new life in the army, tensions rise over race, sexuality, and class, culminating in an explosive act that changes them forever. This group includes Billy, a new recruit; Roger, a street-wise refugee from the ghetto; Richie, a sarcastic, bitter gay man and their sodden, ineffectual sergeants, Cokes and Rooney. Awaiting deployment to Vietnam, they are joined by Carlyle, an angry, psychotic young black man, whose presence sets off an escalating spiral of violence and death. Streamers is the third in author David Rabe's quartet plays about the Vietnam War, in which he served.

Streamers premiered in 1976 under the direction of the legendary Mike Nichols at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut. The production transferred to Off-Broadway in 1976 at New York's Lincoln Center, won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play, and was also nominated for a Tony Award as Best Play. Revived on Broadway in 2008, the play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional repertory and college theatre productions.

Cast: 11 male

What people say:

"Hard hitting and extremely funny. A masterly drama with humor, power and impressive depths of understanding." — New York Daily News

"David Rabe's finest play so far... is enough to restore anyone's faith in the future of native theater. Externally the play is about Vietnam-bound soldiers; underneath it is about the way human beings struggle to find responsive common cords in one another, and often fail." — New York Magazine

About the Playwright:

David Rabe has been hailed as one of America's greatest living playwrights. Four of his plays have been nominated for the Tony Award, including one win for Best Play. He is the recipient of an Obie Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, Drama Desk Award, and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and three Hull-Warriner Awards for playwriting, among others. He is also the author of numerous screenplays, two critically acclaimed novels and a collection of short stories. Born in Dubuque, Iowa, David Rabe lives with his family in Northwest Connecticut.