Events at the Shop
David Hare - Obedience, Struggle and Revolt
Thursday 6 October 2005
David Hare’s event at the London Review Bookshop a few months after the publication of Obedience, Struggle and Revolt: Lectures on Theatre found him on fine form. Hare took the opportunity to extemporise on subjects such as why he writes for the theatre and not for television, what distinguishes political writing, how subjects choose him, the controversy within the 1968 generation, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and much more besides.
Theatre and Politics
Listen now (15:37)
David Hare explains the driving force behind Obedience, Struggle and Revolt: his desire to make a claim for the theatre, and especially about politics, to counteract what he saw as the British literary establishment’s tendency to look down on both the performing arts and political writing as suspect. He reads from the opening essay of the book, explaining the choice of title, and the impact on him of the theatrical politics of the 1970s.
Political Writers as Short-Order Chefs
Listen now (18:02)
Hare attacks the idea that those who write on public subjects are “less in hock to our muses” than those who focus on more private topics. He discusses the difficulties of choosing a subject, the importance of finding a metaphor, and the crucial differences between political writing and journalism.
Audience Questions: Theatre
Listen now (13:39)
Hare responds to audience questions on theatre and writing:
- Pinter/Beckett: why he believes Pinter is a greater writer than Beckett
- TV/theatre: why he writes for the theatre rather than television
- Drama/journalism: why the collective experience of the theatre can present “something more than the events themselves”
- Playwrights/novelists: why novelists are wrong to think that writing plays is easier than writing novels.
Audience Questions: Politics
Listen now (11:47)
Further questions from the audience cover more political topics:
- Optimism/pessimism: Hare considers the deep divisions on the left in the late 1960s, and the need to take time to absorb the way in which things are changing before writing about them
- Israel/Palestine: how his trip to the Middle East came about through his association with the Royal Court theatre, and his experiences of both seeing and writing about Israel and Palestine
- 07/07/05: why he won’t be writing a play about the 7 July tube bombings, the similarities between the victims of the London bombings and those of the Ladbroke Grove crash, and the imposibilities of explaining terrorism through drama
- Directocracy/diversity: theatre’s ability to supply a middle ground between “moronic mass media” and the “isolation of academia”, plus the question of feminism: ‘directocracy’ versus diversity.
Recorded and edited by Adrian Leibowitz and Brett Wilson
Common Custom:documentary & archive
David Hare is one of Britain’s most internationally performed playwrights. He was born in Sussex in 1947. Thirteen of his plays have been presented at the National Theatre, including a trilogy about the Church, the Law and the Labour Party – Racing Demon, Murmuring Judges and The Absence of War – which was presented in repertory in the Olivier Theatre in 1993. His most recent play, The Vertical Hour, was staged at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2008.
Further Reading
If you enjoyed this event, you may also be interested in:
Betsy Blair - The Memory of All That