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Berlin/Wall
Berlin/Wall
In 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 there's something in Berlin's elusive character that makes him feel he's always missing the point. Now, to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the reunification, he offers a meditation about Germany's 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 wall's 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.
In 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 there's something in Berlin's elusive character that makes him feel he's always missing the point. Now, to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the reunification, he offers a meditation about Germany's 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 wall's 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.
47 pages, Paperback
First published March 19, 2009
22 people want to read
About the author
David Hare
118 books84 followersSir 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...
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...
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 13, 2015
Words are my heart, but I can't imagine getting any as tattoos. a) once I got one, my entire body would end up covered -- not a problem except for the fact that b) like anyone, what matters to me changes. Words, laden with significance once, might later shift their meaning.
But when I finished this very short book (two 'readings' centered on two places that have built walls -- Berlin & the West Bank), I fully copied a sentence down on my wrist because I wanted the words to be part of me and I didn't know what else to do. I frequently get this feeling; I rarely actually write them on my skin.
I've never read David Hare and this was a marvellous introduction. He is snarky but thoughtful, his writing sharp but beautiful. I won't claim to have any [political, anyway] opinion on "Wall", but "Berlin" spoke volumes about the search for identity -- all throughout history, all throughout youth, all throughout adulthood. Heart-piercing.
and the line:
No single move traps the king.
Preach.
But when I finished this very short book (two 'readings' centered on two places that have built walls -- Berlin & the West Bank), I fully copied a sentence down on my wrist because I wanted the words to be part of me and I didn't know what else to do. I frequently get this feeling; I rarely actually write them on my skin.
I've never read David Hare and this was a marvellous introduction. He is snarky but thoughtful, his writing sharp but beautiful. I won't claim to have any [political, anyway] opinion on "Wall", but "Berlin" spoke volumes about the search for identity -- all throughout history, all throughout youth, all throughout adulthood. Heart-piercing.
and the line:
No single move traps the king.
Preach.
Read
January 31, 2025ngl i picked this up bc it was one of the only english books i found at the school library but it was a very insightful look on countries that build walls, and applicable even more now to israel and palestine. “the wall thus created the violence it was ostensibly created to prevent.”
April 15, 2009
David Hare's recently published "Berlin/Wall" combines the scripts from two dramatic readings, both first performed in London in the late winter of 2009. The scripts are the fruit of his frequent travels to Berlin and the Middle East, and both are compelling in different ways (though the first is more successful insofar as it treats arguably less furrowed terrain).
The first script explores what exactly it is that so many people find so appealing about the city of Berlin. Wrapped up in and often embossing the tone of Hare's explorations is the grim statement of Adorno that anything that can be said about the Holocaust is "both too much and not enough." With this comment in mind, Hare tries to uncover how a nation can be honest with itself without becoming paralyzed by its history. Berlin, he writes, "once the city of polarity, of East and West, of democracy and communism, of fascism and resistance, the twentieth-century battleground of art and politics, is now the city of the provisional. And that's exactly why people like it. It's not about ideas. It's about lifestyle." Or, more expansively, it's about freedom to lead a lifestyle, even a multiplicity of lifestyles. Formerly the multiplicities of Berlin were mandated, government-run. Now they are the province of demos. The freedom of Berlin is the freedom to be rid of ideology.
The second script traffics in the intricacies of the Palestinian-Israeli situation and plumbs the paradoxes of Israel, at once mighty and threatened, at once walling out violence and creating violence by putting up a wall. Hare is shrewd enough to avoid glib solutions to what he recognizes as a vast farrago. At turns critical of each side, he is less interested in developing his own definitive stance and more interested in observing the blindness and priggishness of each side. There is, however, toward the script's end, the suggestion voiced by the Israeli novelist David Grossman, that "When a people have suffered as much as we have it's not a bad feeling to be masters for once. And we became addicted to that feeling, like a narcotic." Both sides are on narcotics, according to Hare, who also points out the Palestinian illogic of installing Saddam Hussein's poster image in a cafe in Nablus. Predictably, matters find their sticky way back to America, to which, a Palestinian tells Hare, Hussein "stood up." America emerges as another wall dividing and joining Jerusalem.
The two scripts sit like neighboring territories, joined and divided by a common theme: one treating the absence of a wall, the other its presence. Together they convoke a startling set of questions about the future of freedom in a place where, until recently, it was denied to large portions of the populace, and in another place where the foundation of one nation's freedom has meant the trampling upon that of another people's. Something there is that doesn't love a wall.
The first script explores what exactly it is that so many people find so appealing about the city of Berlin. Wrapped up in and often embossing the tone of Hare's explorations is the grim statement of Adorno that anything that can be said about the Holocaust is "both too much and not enough." With this comment in mind, Hare tries to uncover how a nation can be honest with itself without becoming paralyzed by its history. Berlin, he writes, "once the city of polarity, of East and West, of democracy and communism, of fascism and resistance, the twentieth-century battleground of art and politics, is now the city of the provisional. And that's exactly why people like it. It's not about ideas. It's about lifestyle." Or, more expansively, it's about freedom to lead a lifestyle, even a multiplicity of lifestyles. Formerly the multiplicities of Berlin were mandated, government-run. Now they are the province of demos. The freedom of Berlin is the freedom to be rid of ideology.
The second script traffics in the intricacies of the Palestinian-Israeli situation and plumbs the paradoxes of Israel, at once mighty and threatened, at once walling out violence and creating violence by putting up a wall. Hare is shrewd enough to avoid glib solutions to what he recognizes as a vast farrago. At turns critical of each side, he is less interested in developing his own definitive stance and more interested in observing the blindness and priggishness of each side. There is, however, toward the script's end, the suggestion voiced by the Israeli novelist David Grossman, that "When a people have suffered as much as we have it's not a bad feeling to be masters for once. And we became addicted to that feeling, like a narcotic." Both sides are on narcotics, according to Hare, who also points out the Palestinian illogic of installing Saddam Hussein's poster image in a cafe in Nablus. Predictably, matters find their sticky way back to America, to which, a Palestinian tells Hare, Hussein "stood up." America emerges as another wall dividing and joining Jerusalem.
The two scripts sit like neighboring territories, joined and divided by a common theme: one treating the absence of a wall, the other its presence. Together they convoke a startling set of questions about the future of freedom in a place where, until recently, it was denied to large portions of the populace, and in another place where the foundation of one nation's freedom has meant the trampling upon that of another people's. Something there is that doesn't love a wall.
January 10, 2019
i hate to say that i am becoming a david hare fan
December 24, 2019
Helped me be clear about my own thoughts on the walls, religion, the state.
December 31, 2013
I will fully admit to being awful at explaining my aesthetic tastes when I say I really enjoyed this play*. An exploration of the walls we build, love to hate/hate to love, and the walls that more or less end up as symbols for their respective eras, Hare's reflections on the Berlin and Palestinian walls make for good reading. Like most contemporary-but-historical-plays, accounts are to be taken with fistfuls of salt, though that does not mean they cannot be taken to heart. I liked it, and that's about the best I can offer on this one.
*Extended monologue? One man show? It's decidedly staged, yet I can't imagine restaging it, OR it's having a very long performance life.
*Extended monologue? One man show? It's decidedly staged, yet I can't imagine restaging it, OR it's having a very long performance life.
February 9, 2016
Typical Hare; exquisitely and acutely observed, and intelligently written with flashes of poetry ("No single move traps the king" I mean COME ON.)
I hesitate to call these two pieces a 'play' as there didn't seem to be any dramatic tension within the two pieces, only between them. Definitely an extension of Via Dolorosa, but without the layers and depth, I felt.
Still, Hare demonstrates he is the premier dramatist of the political sphere, and my favourite writer.
Also, it's really freaking short.
I hesitate to call these two pieces a 'play' as there didn't seem to be any dramatic tension within the two pieces, only between them. Definitely an extension of Via Dolorosa, but without the layers and depth, I felt.
Still, Hare demonstrates he is the premier dramatist of the political sphere, and my favourite writer.
Also, it's really freaking short.
June 28, 2016
Two monologues on the effect two dividing walls have had on their communities.
The first is the effect the demolition of the Wall has had on Berlin.
The second about how the dividing wall is effecting both communities in Palestine/Israel.
These will certainly bare repeated readings.
The first is the effect the demolition of the Wall has had on Berlin.
The second about how the dividing wall is effecting both communities in Palestine/Israel.
These will certainly bare repeated readings.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews