Background

David Hare was born on the 5th of June, 1947 in Hastings, East Sussex, United Kingdom. He was the son of Clifford Theodore Rippon Hare and Agnes Cockburn Gilmour. The Hare family claimed descent from the Earls of Bristol.

Education

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.

Career

Hare worked with the Portable Theatre Company from 1968 to 1971. His first play, Slag, was produced in 1970. 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).

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.

Aside from films he has also written teleplays for the BBC such as Licking Hitler (1978), and 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.

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. He was knighted in 1998.

Achievements

• Hare became known as a screenwriter for his film adaptation of Plenty in 1985. His screenplay adaptations of Michael Cunningham’s novel The Hours and Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader (released in 2002 and 2008, respectively) were nominated for Academy Awards. In 2011 Hare received the PEN Pinter Prize, given to a British writer of outstanding merit. He was knighted in 1998. The Blue Touch Paper (2015) is a memoir of his early life and career.
  
  

Works

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• book

  • Acting Up

    (A diary on his experiences of acting in his own play, the...)

    1999
  • Obedience, Struggle and Revolt

• play

  • Murmuring Judges

    (A young lawyer's involvement in her first case leads her ...)

    1991
  • The Vertical Hour

    (The Vertical Hour is a thought-provoking exploration of h...)

    2006
  • Behind the Beautiful Forevers

    (A stage adaptation of Katherine Boo's National Book Award...)

    2014
  • The Red Barn: Adapted from the novel La Main

    (The great detective writer George Simenon escaped France ...)

    2016
  • The Breath of Life

    (This moral tale of two women, both in their sixties, whos...)

    2002
  • Gethsemane

    (Nothing is more important to a modern political party tha...)

    2008
  • Stuff Happens

    ("Stuff happens . . . And it's untidy, and freedom's untid...)

    2004
  • I'm Not Running 2018
  • Racing Demon 1990
  • Skylight 1995
  • The Blue Room: A Play in Ten Intimate Acts 1998
  • Plenty 1978
  • The Judas Kiss 1998
  • My Zinc Bed 2008
  • The Secret Rapture and Other Plays 1988
  • The Moderate Soprano 2015
  • The Power of Yes 2009
  • A Map of the World 1982
  • The Permanent Way 2003
  • The Absence of War 1995
  • Berlin 2009
  • The Secret Rapturey 1988
  • Knuckle 1974

Connections

In 1970, David Hare married his first wife, Margaret Matheson, the couple had three children and divorced in 1980. He is married to the French fashion designer Nicole Farhi.

Father:

Clifford Theodore Rippon Hare

Mother:

Agnes Cockburn

Spouse:

Nicole Farhi

ex-wife:

Margaret Matheson

Friend:

Tony Bicat

References

• The Blue Touch Paper: A Memoir