Set in 1962 Midwestern America. Raw, funny, intimate, and fiercely human, David Rabe's An Early History of Fire explores the forces that shape us, the relationships that bind us, and the courage it takes to imagine a different future.

A life defined by working-class pride, childhood friendships, family loyalties, and the complicated love of a father who cannot let go. A young man falls for a free-spirited young woman whose ideas challenge everything he thought he knew about love, loyalty, and identity, awakening the frightening possibility of a life beyond the one he’s inherited.

Against the backdrop of a country on the cusp of cultural revolution, old ideals collide with new possibilities. Love, sex, ambition, class, and identity become battlegrounds as a generation begins to question the lives laid out before them.