Obedience, Struggle and Revolt

by David Hare

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 lifetime's sustained thinking about art and politics. 'The foremost theatrical chronicler of contemporary British life.' New York Times 'Our best writer of contemporary drama.' Sunday Times

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction

265 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Sir David Hare (born 5 June 1947) is an English playwright, screenwriter and theatre and film director. Most notable for his stage work, Hare has also enjoyed great success with films, receiving two Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay for writing The Hours in 2002, based on the novel written by Michael Cunningham, and The Reader in 2008, based on the novel of the same name written by Bernhard Schlink.

On West End, he had his greatest success with the plays Plenty, which he adapted into a film starring Meryl Streep in 1985, Racing Demon (1990), Skylight (1997), and Amy's View (1998). The four plays ran on Broadway in 1982–83, 1996, 1998 and 1999 respectively, earning Hare three Tony Award nominations for Best Play for the first three and two Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play. Other notable projects on stage include A Map of the World, Pravda, Murmuring Judges, The Absence of War and The Vertical Hour. He wrote screenplays for the film Wetherby and the BBC drama Page Eight (2011).

As of 2013, Hare has received two Academy Award nominations, three Golden Globe Award nominations, three Tony Award nominations and has won a BAFTA Award, a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and two Laurence Olivier Awards. He has also been awarded several critics' awards such as the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and received the Golden Bear in 1985. He was knighted in 1998.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ha...

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really excellent stuff. Superbly written, very readable, radical, angry and urgent. His lectures on John Osbourne, on the arid shit of the modern media landscape (delivered to a group of media people no less!) and his last lecture on Christanity are particularly superb.

It's not all perfect, he's far stronger when talking about the process of art and playwriting, weaker when talking about politics in general. Despite being probably Britain's most radical playwright he still displays an insufferably pathetic twiddling genteel English social democrat mentality which tries to appear principled but comes across as pitiful pathetic. His knowledge of Marxism is laughable. His support for the Afghanistan war in its earliest days, and his sense of genuine hurt to discover, shock horror, that Bush and Co were a pack of psychopathic war criminals intended on nothing more than the unusual policy of the criminal US empire of the past 60 years, displays a naivety bordering on the mentally imbecellic. His article on Palestine is both-sidesism at its worse. As with most artists his ever-so-sensetive creative temperament comes across as fairly narcissistic, venerating the purity of art over the grubbinness of commited (and especially Marxist) politics. Still very, very good overall.

[Caitlin Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of David Hare's unique talents is his ability to be completely comfortable with being disagreeable. This is a cutting, clever, radical - and at certain points, particularly loving - series of lectures. In them, Hare never shies away from stating his opinion, bemoaning his previous concepts, or drawing out how strongly others dislike his work. This honesty, and disagreeability means that pretence has no place to hide, and everything Hare tells us, he means. Ostensibly on theatre, Hare is at his best when discussing the arts, the state of modern media, and how and why believe in culture, and not religion. Whilst strikingly well written, his political pieces are the weaker of the bunch, not for a lack of passion or knowledge, but simply because it is where he has the least new or personal things to say. It is, to put it short, not his primary wheelhouse.
Standouts are 'The Play is in the Air', 'When shall we live?', 'The Cordless Phone', and 'What Asian Babes? What Nazis?' - the last of which is an absolute obliteration of the British media and journalism, delivered, no less, to a room of media executives and company owners. He is a playwright, so of course, fantastic at a turn of phrase, but I am struck by how beautifully he writes in this collection. One phrase which has stuck with me where Hare warns against artists against rejecting the urgency of contemporary work and practice, and which I will leave you with is as follows:
"We can never be sure that years ago we did not board the wrong boat. But let the waves take us, not the crew's idleness'.

[Jeff Howells · Rating 3 out of 5]

David Hare is this country’s preeminent ‘State of the Nation’ playwright. For him a play’s job is not merely to entertain but it must also educate.
This short book is a collection of speeches, talks, a smattering of appreciations of other writers and the odd obituary. His touchstones of politics & religion come up several times (you have to admire him for delivering a speech criticising religion in Westminster Abbey!). For some he is the very epitome of a liberally leftie. That’s probably why I quite like him.
This book isn’t as essential as his plays nor his later tv work, but I picked it up for only a couple of quid so for that price it was a bargain.