contemporary dramatists. Streamers, part of the Vietnam trilogy which includes The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Sticks and Bones (The Vietnam Plays, volume one), is the story of a group of paratroopers desperately attempting to cope with the chaos of their emotions when they are ordered to Vietnam.In this volume, Streamers is paired with The Orphan, a brilliant synthesis of classic Greek drama and the conflicted character of contemporary America. All four plays focus on what the author calls “the eternal human pageant.” War is not a political phenomenon but an elemental force, a human inevitability, like love or death, and Rabe’s plays encompass it as such. They are essential works about our society.

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