This is a new collection of some of David Hare's finest work, including Skylight (Winner of the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play, 1996), Amy's View, The Judas Kiss and My Zinc Bed.
Portraying the two critical moments in Oscar Wilde's late life -- when he decides to stay in England and face imprisonment and the night after his release, two years later -- David Hare's The Judas Kiss presents the consequences of taking an uncompromisingly moral position in a world defined by fear, expedience, and conformity.
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.
After sold-out performances at the National Theatre prompted a transfer to the West End, Judi Dench came to Broadway to star in this heady and original drama of love and death. In 1979 Esme Allen is a well-known British actress caught in a changing West End climate that is trying for performers. A visit from her young daughter with a new boyfriend sets in motion a series of events which only find their shape sixteen years later. -- Publisher's website.
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
How do you fight without hate?Racing Demon reveals the struggle of four clergymen to make sense of their mission. David Hare's 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 Hare's trilogy of plays about British institutions; Murmuring Judges and The Absence of War completed the trilogy.
This book is about coincidents that have happened in my life that affected the American public, from cities being changed forever once we left to important buildings being raised. These are just a few incidents that can be remembered. Sayings such as “rip off” or “under the bus” are identified and repeated often publicly. Somehow, songs of the fifties could be traced to my experiences.
"David Hare's new play The Vertical Hour is a thought-provoking exploration of how the political can sometimes intersect, collide with and ultimately dismantle the personal. While the play is positively brimming with cogent and fascinating arguments involving the current political situation, the production only fitfully succeeds in bringing this story to life. Hare fills The Vertical Hour with several of these ethical and philosophical quandaries that serve not only as dramatic interplay between the three main characters, but, also metaphorically as the basis for several of the arguments politicians and intellectuals are having these days concerning the role that America and the West have taken in Iraq, the Middle East and beyond."--Publisher's website.
In 1997 the 50-year-old playwright David Hare decided to visit the 50-year-old state of Israel and write a play - Via Dolorosa - about the conflict. He then chose to become the actor of his own play and set about learning to act the monologue for an uninterrupted 95 minutes on stage. Acting Up is a diary of the ups and downs of that learning curve as well as an insight into what it is actors, directors, producers and stage staff actually do in rehearsals. Hare's hilarious diary of his experience on both sides of the Atlantic tells of his difficulties in coming to terms with his terrifying change of career, but also grapples with more serious questions about the nature of acting itself.