David Hare

How do you fight without hate?Racing Demon reveals the struggle of four clergymen to make sense of their mission. David Hares play opened at the National Theatre, London, in 1990 to universal acclaim, and won four awards as Play of the Year. Racing Demon was the first part of David Hares trilogy of plays about British institutions; Murmuring Judges and The Absence of War completed the trilogy.

Schnitzler described Reigen, his loose series of sexual sketches, as completely unprintable. The company that first presented them was prosecuted for obscenity in 1921. It was only when Max Ophuls made his famous film in 1950 that the work became better known as La Ronde. Now David Hare has re-set these circular scenes of love and betrayal in the present day. Using as much imaginative freedom in his turn as Ophuls did fifty years ago, and with just two actors playing all of the parts, Hare has created a fascinating landscape of dream and longing which seems both eternal and bang-up-to-date.

Berlin/WallIn two contrasted readings for the stage, David Hare visits a place where a famous wall has come down; then another where a wall is going up.Berlin For his whole adult life, David Hare has been visiting the city which so many young people regard as the most exciting in Europe. But theres something in Berlins elusive character that makes him feel hes always missing the point. Now, to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the reunification, he offers a meditation about Germanys restored capital - both what it represents in European history, and the peculiar part it has played in his own life.Wall The Israeli/Palestine security fence will one day stretch 486 miles, from one end of Israel to the other. It will be four times as long as the Berlin wall, and in places twice as high. In this second monologue, the playwright recalls his trips to both Israel and the Palestinian territory and offers a history of the walls building, an exploration of the philosophy behind it and a personal account of those who live on either side. Berlin premiered at the National Theatre, London, in February 2009 and Wall premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in March 2009.Of all British dramatists, Hare is the one who has always seemed to have the sharpest awareness of what is going on around him, which is what makes him such an eagerly sought-after journalist. Michael Billington

The leading British writer-director of his generation, David Hare is also one of the most productive. The last two years have seen the outstanding success of two stage plays, The Secret Rapture and Racing Demon, and the release of two films, Paris by Night and Strapless. The pieces collected here, written left-handed, form both a concealed professional autobiography and a lucid commentary on his work.

Its not just that rich people dont know what theyve got. They dont even know what they throw away.India is beginning to prosper. But beyond the luxury hotels surrounding Mumbai airport is an obstacle, a makeshift slum. Its home to foul mouthed Zehrunisa and her garbage sorting son Abdul, entrepreneurs both. Sunil, twelve, picks plastic. Manju, schoolteacher, hopes to be the settlements first woman to gain a degree. Asha, go-to woman, exploits every scam to become a first-class person. And Fatima, One Leg, is about to make an accusation that will destroy herself and shatter the neighbourhood. Katherine Boo spent three years under the flight-path, recording the lives of Annawadis diverse inhabitants. Now from Boos book, which won the National Book Award for Non-Fiction in 2012, David Hare has fashioned an epic play for the stage which details the ingenious and sometimes violent ways in which the poor and disadvantaged negotiate with corruption to seek a handhold on capitalisms lowest rungs.David Hares stage adaptation of Behind the Beautiful Forevers premiered at the National Theatre, London, in November 2014.

Skylight premiered at the National Theatre in 1995 and then went on to become one of the most internationally successful plays of recent years. This is the definitive edition of Skylight.

This play ran at the National Theatre, London, throughout 1978 and the New York production in the autumn of 1982 was equally well received. In counterpointing the experiences of an Englishwoman helping the French Resistance during the war with her life in the following twenty years, the author offers a unique view of postwar history, as well as making a powerful statement about changing values and the collapse of ideals embodied in a single life.Plenty is also a major film produced by Edward R. Pressman and Joseph Papp with Mark Seiler as Executive Producer, and directed by Fred Schepisi from a screenplay by David Hare. The cast, headed by double Oscar-winner Meryl Streep, includes Charles Dance, Tracy Ullman, John Gielgud, Sting, Ian McKellen and Sam Neill.

What is a political playwright? Does theatre have any direct effect on society? Why choose to work in a medium which speaks to so few? Is theatre itself facing oblivion? All frequent questions addressed to David Hare over the last thirty-five years, as his work has taken him from the travelling fringe to the National Theatre, from seasons on Broadway to performances in prisons, church halls and on bare floors. Since 1978, Hare has sought uniquely to address these and other questions in occasional lectures given both in Britain and abroad. Now, for the first time, these lectures are collected together with some of his more recent prose pieces about God, Iraq, Israel/Palestine and the privatisation of the railways. Bringing to the lectern the same wit, insight and gift for the essential for which his plays are known, Hare presents the distilled result of a lifetimes sustained thinking about art and politics. The foremost theatrical chronicler of contemporary British life.New York TimesOur best writer of contemporary drama.Sunday Times

On 15 September 2008, capitalism came to a grinding halt. As sub-prime mortgages and toxic securities continued to dominate the headlines well into 2009, this spring the National Theatre asked David Hare to write an urgent and immediate work to be staged this autumn that sought to find out what had happened, and why.Capitalism works when greed and fear are in the correct balance. This time they got out of balance. Too much greed, not enough fear. Meeting with many of the key players from the financial world, David Hare, author of The Permanent Way and Stuff Happens, has created The Power of Yes: a compelling narrative, as enlightening as it is entertaining.Its like a ship which youre being told is in apple-pie order, the decks are cleaned, the metal is burnished, the only thing nobody mentions, its being driven at full speed towards an iceberg. Not so much a play as a jaw-dropping account of how, as the banks went bust, capitalism was replaced by a socialism that bailed out the rich alone.The Power of Yes opened at the National Theatre, London, in September 2009.

The great detective writer George Simenon escaped France at the end of World War Two, and arrived in the USA to start again. With his American wife, he settled at Shadow Rock Farm in Lakeville. Years later, he wrote La Main, a psychological thriller set in a New England farmhouse. David Hare has taken this novel and forged from it a startling new play.

In 1991, before an election they did not expect to win, the Conservative government made a fateful decision to privatize the railways. As a result, the taxpayer subsidizes rail more lavishly then ever before. In The Permanent Way, David Hare, working with actors from the Out of Joint Company, tells the intricate, madcap story of a dream gone sour, by gathering together the first-hand accounts of those most intimately involved - from every level of the system. A drama that stirs indignation and pity in equal measure, political theatre that transcends the old conflicts between Right and Left to condemn the whole mindset and attitudes of those allegedly running our nations affairs. It is, by a mile, the most significant and revealing new play of the year. If you want to understand why Britain isnt working, you need to see The Permanent Way. Daily TelegraphA compelling, fast-moving and astringently witty collage of first-hand testimonies and conflicting points of view... The picture that emerges with great force from these vivid, eloquently juxtaposed vignettes is of a debased culture that sets less store by the expertise that comes from intimate knowledge of a subject than by vacuous so-called management skills. IndependentA vitally necessary piece of theatre. Guardian

I want to give my country a model of perfection... Nothing less. My country needs cheering up. Im the man to do it. Nobody can doubt John Christies passion nor his formidable will: his wooing of his opera singer wife has been marked by a determination befitting a man who won the Military Cross at the Battle of Loos. Now, in 1934, this Etonian science teachers admiration for the works of Wagner has led him to embark on an ambitious project: the construction of an Opera House on his estate in Sussex. But such is the scale of the enterprise that passion alone may not be enough. Its only when a famous violinist is delayed by fog overnight in Eastbourne that Christie hears word of a group of refugees for whom life in Germany is becoming impossible. Perhaps they can deliver Christies vision of the sublime - assuming theyre willing to cast his wife in the lead. David Hares new play is the story of an intense love affair between some unlikely bedfellows, and of the unrelenting search for artistic excellence in the face of searing scrutiny, sacrifice and war. The Moderate Soprano premieres at Hampstead Theatre, London, in October 2015.

John Blakemore is a solitary boy who finds it impossible either to understand or adapt to the ways of the school. His adolescent earnestness put off teacher and pupil alike. And now suddenly he seems to be in danger of losing his only friend. David Hares emotional new play, written at the invitation of the Rattigan estate as a response to The Browning Version, is a meditation on faith, learning and teenage friendship, played against the backdrop of a Britain still fighting to maintain an established rule. Collected with South Downs is the text of Hares lecture Mere Fact, Mere Fiction, delivered to the Royal Society of Literature in 2010. In a famous defence of documentary theatre, the author celebrates the power of metaphor to transform factual quite as much as fictional material.

Nothing is more important to a modern political party than fund-raising. But the values of the donors cant always coincide with the professed beliefs of the party. And family scandal within the cabinet has the potential to throw both the money-raisers and the money-spenders into chaos. This richly imagined ensemble play about British public life looks at the way business, media and politics are now intertwined to nobodys advantage, as, in an unforgiving world, one character after another passes through Gethsemane.Gethsemane, David Hares fourteenth original play for the National Theatre, London, premiered in November 2008.

My whole life, its been assumed, Western civilisation is an old bitch gone in the teeth. And so people say, go to Israel. Because in Israel at least people are fighting. In Israel, theyre fighting for something they believe in.Via DolorosaIn 1997, after many invitations, the 50-year-old British playwright resolved finally to visit the 50-year-old State of Israel. The resulting play, written to be performed by the author himself, offers a meditation on an extraordinary trip to both Israel and the Palestinian territory, which leaves Hare questioning his own values as searchingly as the powerful beliefs of those he met. Accompanying Via Dolorosa is the 1996 lecture When Shall We Live?, which also addresses questions of art and faith. Originally given in Westminster Abbey as the Eric Symes Memorial Lecture, it attracted record correspondence when an abridged version was published in the Daily Telegraph.

This first volume of David Hares plays contains his work from the 1970s, including his landmark play of that decade, Plenty, charting the development of one of the great post-war British playwrights (Independent on Sunday). The volume also includes the plays Slag, Teeth n Smiles, Knuckle and Licking Hitler, and is introduced by the author.

Stuff happens... And its untidy, and freedoms untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. The famous response of Donald Rumsfeld, American Secretary of Defense, to the looting of Baghdad, at a press conference on 11 April 2003, provides the title for a new play, specially written for the Olivier Theatre, about the extraordinary process leading up to the invasion of Iraq. How does the world settle its differences, now there is only one superpower? What happens to leaders risking their credibility with sceptical publics? From events which have dominated international headlines for the last two years David Hare has fashioned both a historical narrative and a human drama about the frustrations of power and the limits of diplomacy.Stuff Happens premiered at the National Theatre, London, in 2004 season and has subsequently been performed around the world. In April 2006, it was given its New York premiere at the Public Theater in this new, slightly updated text.

Should I run? This is the question Pauline Gibson is asking herself. She has spent her adult life as a doctor, the inspiring leader of a campaign for local health provision. When she crosses paths with her old boyfriend, Jack Gould, who has made his way in Labour party politics, shes faced with an agonising decision. Whats involved in sacrificing your private life and your peace of mind for something more than a single issue? Does she dare? David Hare was recently described by the Washington Post as the premiere political dramatist writing in English. His explosive new play portrays the history of a twenty year intimate friendship and its public repercussions. David Hares new play Im not Running, premieres at the National Theatre, London, in October 2018.

An elderly antiquarian bookseller has just died at his home in the country. His two daughters come to attend to things. Isobel, who has been nursing him, is a partner in a small design firm. Marion is in politics - already a junior minister. It is Marions profession to provide answers, and to back those who offer solutions, but not all human situations yield to a professional approach - least of all when they involve their junior step-mother Katherine. In this elegantly constructed play, a mordant comedy of manners deepens into a painfully unsparing examination of the consequences of applying principled pragmatism to human feelings.David Hare has written one of the best English plays since the war and established himself as the finest British dramatist of his generation. John Peter, Sunday Times

David Hares trilogy of plays - Racing Demon, Murmuring Judges, The Absence of War - first presented at the National Theatre, London, in 1993, examines the crises facing three great British institutions - the Church, the Law and the Labour Party. In order to learn about these organisations, Hare amassed a body of hard research from first-hand interviews with many of the people involved: from vicars to high-ranking policemen, from judges to MPs. Asking Around presents a judicious selection of those interviews and also includes a commentary by Hare, describing how he threaded his way through the complex structures of Church, Law and Politics.