David Hare (playwright)

David Hare was born and raised – first in a flat, then in a semi-detached house – in St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings, Sussex, the son of Agnes Cockburn (née Gilmour) and Clifford Theodore Rippon Hare, a passenger ship's purser in the Merchant Navy.[1] The Hare family claimed descent from the Earls of Bristol.[2][3][4][5] Hare was educated at Lancing College, an independent school in Sussex, and at Jesus College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge, he was the Hiring Manager on the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club Committee in 1968.[6]

Hare worked with the Portable Theatre Company from 1968 to 1971. His first play, Slag, was produced in 1970, the same year in which he married his first wife, Margaret Matheson; the couple had three children and divorced in 1980. He was Resident Dramatist at the Royal Court Theatre, London, from 1970 to 1971, and in 1973 became resident dramatist at the Nottingham Playhouse. He co-founded the Joint Stock Theatre Company with David Aukin and Max Stafford-Clark in 1975. Hare's play Plenty was produced at the National Theatre in 1978, followed by A Map of the World in 1983, and Pravda in 1985, co-written with Howard Brenton.

Hare became the Associate Director of the National Theatre in 1984, and has since seen many of his plays produced, such as his trilogy of plays about major British institutions Racing Demon, Murmuring Judges, and The Absence of War. He has also directed many other plays aside from his own works, such as The Pleasure Principle by Snoo Wilson, Weapons of Happiness by Howard Brenton, and King Lear by William Shakespeare for the National Theatre. He is also the author of a collection of lectures on the arts and politics called Obedience, Struggle, and Revolt (2005).[7]

Hare founded a film company called Greenpoint Films in 1982, and has written screenplays such as Plenty, Wetherby, Strapless, and Paris by Night. In December 2011, it was announced that his monologue Wall about the Israeli West Bank barrier is being adapted as a live-action/animated documentary by the National Film Board of Canada, directed by Cam Christiansen, to be completed in 2014.[8] Aside from films he has also written teleplays such as, for the BBC, Licking Hitler (1978), and, for Thames Television, Saigon: Year of the Cat (1983). In November 2012, The New School for Drama selected Hare as temporary Artist-in-residence in which he met with student playwrights about his experience in varying mediums.[9]

His career is examined in the Reputations strand on TheatreVoice.[10] He is particularly well known for incisive commentary on the problems of public institutions. Raymond Williams once said, sardonically, that the public services are largely managed by the nation's "upper servants". Hare addresses this group, providing an analysis of the workings of the institutions: he is, he has said, interested in the struggle to make procedures work better - right now - not in waiting until some revolution, somehow, sometime, comes about to raze the current system altogether, to replace it with perfection.[11]

In 1993, he sold his archive to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.[12] The archive consists of typescript drafts, notes, rehearsal scripts, schedules, production notes, correspondence, theatre programs, resumes, photographs, and published texts associated with Hare's plays, teleplays, screenplays, and essays, as well as foreign-language translations of Hare's works; works by other authors; personal correspondence; minutes of meetings; and Hare's English papers from Cambridge University. Additions were made in 1996 and 2014.

Hare's awards include the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (1975), BAFTA Award (1979), the New York Drama Critics Circle Award (1983), the Berlin Film Festival Golden Bear (1985), the Olivier Award (1990), and the London Theatre Critics' Award (1990). In 1997, he was a member of the jury at the 47th Berlin International Film Festival.[13] He was knighted in 1998.

He is married to the French fashion designer Nicole Farhi. In 2020 he contracted COVID-19, an experience reflected in his monologue Beat the Devil.[14]

• Slag (1970)
• The Great Exhibition (1972)
• Brassneck (1973) (with Howard Brenton)
• Knuckle (1974)
• Fanshen (1975). Based on William H. Hinton, Fanshen: Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village (1966)
• Teeth 'n' Smiles (1975)
• Plenty (1978)
• A Map of the World (1982)
• Pravda (1985) (with Howard Brenton)
• The Bay at Nice, and Wrecked Eggs (1986)
• The Knife (1987) (with Nick Bicat and Tim Rose Price)[15]
• The Secret Rapture (1988)
• Racing Demon (1990)
• Murmuring Judges (1991)
• The Absence of War (1993)
• Skylight (1995; revived in London and on Broadway, in 2014 and 2015, respectively)
• Amy's View (1997)
• Ivanov (1997; revised and revived 2015) (adapted from Chekhov)
• The Blue Room (1998) (adapted from Arthur Schnitzler)
• The Judas Kiss (1998)
• Via Dolorosa (1998)
• My Zinc Bed (2000)
• Platonov (2001; revived 2015) (adapted from Chekhov)
• The Breath of Life (2002)
• The Permanent Way (2003)
• Stuff Happens (2004)
• The Vertical Hour (2006)
• Gethsemane (2008)[16]
• Berlin (2009)[17]
• Wall (2009)[18]
• The Power of Yes (2009)[19]
• South Downs (2011)
• Behind the Beautiful Forevers (2014) (adapted from Behind the Beautiful Forevers)
• The Seagull (2015) (adapted from Chekhov)
• The Moderate Soprano (2015)
• The Red Barn (2016) (adapted from La Main by Georges Simenon)
• I'm Not Running (2018)
• Beat the Devil (2020)

• Licking Hitler (1978)
• Dreams of Leaving (1980)
• Wetherby (1985)
• Plenty (1985) - based on his play
• Strapless (1989)
• Damage (1992)
• The Secret Rapture (1993) - based on his play
• The Absence of War (1995) - based on his play
• The Hours (2002) - based on the novel by Michael Cunningham
• The Corrections (2007) - based on the novel by Jonathan Franzen
• My Zinc Bed (2008) - based on his play
• Murder in Samarkand (2008) - based on the memoir by Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan
• The Reader (2008) - based on the novel by Bernhard Schlink
• Page Eight (2011) (also directed)
• Turks & Caicos (2014) (also directed)
• Salting the Battlefield (2014) (also directed)
• Denial (2016)
• The White Crow (2018)
• Collateral (2018)
• Roadkill (2020)

• Licking Hitler for BBC1's Play for Today (1978)
• Dreams of Leaving for BBC1's Play for Today (1980)
• Wetherby (1985)
• Paris by Night (1988)
• Strapless (1989)
• Paris, May 1919 (1993) (TV episode)
• The Designated Mourner, written by Wallace Shawn (1989)
• Heading Home (1991) (TV film)
• The Year of Magical Thinking (2007) (Broadway play by Joan Didion starring Vanessa Redgrave)
• Page Eight (2011) (also wrote)
• Turks & Caicos (2014) (also wrote)
• Salting the Battlefield (2014) (also wrote)

• 1979 BAFTA Award (British Academy of Film and Television) for Best Single Play for Licking Hitler
• 1983 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Foreign Play for Plenty[20]
• 1985 Berlin Film Festival Golden Bear for Wetherby[21]
• 1990 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play for Racing Demon
• 1990 London Theatre Critics' Award for Best Play for Racing Demon
• 1995 Evening Standard Award for Best Play for Pravda
• 1997 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Foreign Play for Skylight[20]
• 1999 New York Drama Critics' Circle Special Citation for Amy's View, The Blue Room, and Via Dolorosa[20]
• 1999 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One-Person Show for Via Dolorosa
• 2011 PEN/Pinter Prize

Wikimedia Commons has media related to David Hare (playwright).

Wikiquote has quotations related to: David Hare (dramatist)

• David Hare at IMDb
• Sir David Hare at British Council: Literature
• David Hare at the Internet Broadway Database
• David Hare Collection, Additional Papers at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
• David Hare - contributor page at The New York Review of Books
• Archival material at