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 (MA (Cantab.), English Literature). 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 was being adapted by Cam Christiansen as a live-action/animated documentary by the National Film Board of Canada;[8] originally slated for completed in 2014, Wall premiered at the Calgary International Film Festival in 2017.[9] 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.[10]

His career is examined in the Reputations strand on TheatreVoice.[11] 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.[12]

In 1993, he sold his archive to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.[13] 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.[14] He was knighted in 1998.

He is married to the French fashion designer Nicole Farhi. In 1993 Hare's best friend Sarah Matheson was diagnosed with Multiple System Atrophy and died from the disease in 1999.[15] In 2015, Hare broadcast the BBC Radio 4 Appeal to raise money for the Multiple System Atrophy Trust, which was founded by Matheson.[16]

In 2020, he contracted COVID-19, an experience reflected in his monologue Beat the Devil.[17]

Selected credits

Hare has received various award nominations including two Academy Award nominations for The Hours (2002), and The Reader (2008). As well as two Golden Globe Award nominations, and five BAFTA Award nominations. For his work in theatre he has received eight Laurence Olivier Awards winning twice for Racing Demon in 1990 and Skylight in 1996. He has also received three Tony Award nominations for Plenty in 1985, Racing Demon in 1996 and Skylight in 1997.

He has also received various honours including knighthoods, degrees, and fellows. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1985. This gave him the Post Nominal Letters "FRSL" for Life.[23] He was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by Jesus College, Cambridge in 2001.[24] He was knighted in the 1998 Queen's Birthday Honours List "For services to the Theatre". This allows him to use the title Sir. He was awarded the Honorary degree of Doctor of Letters (D.Litt) by the University of East Anglia in 2010.[25]

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