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David Hare
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David Hare

David Hare has written over thirty stage plays and thirty screenplays for film and television. The plays include Plenty, Pravda (with Howard Brenton), The Secret Rapture, Racing Demon, Skylight, Amy’s View, The Blue Room, Via Dolorosa, Stuff Happens, The Absence of War, The Judas Kiss, The Red Barn, The Moderate Soprano, I’m Not Running and Beat the Devil. For cinema, he has written The Hours, The Reader, Damage, Denial, Wetherby and The White Crow among others, while his television films include Licking Hitler, the Worricker Trilogy, Collateral and Roadkill. In a millennial poll of the greatest plays of the twentieth century, five of the top hundred were his.

Biography
1947
David Hare was born and raised in St Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex. Educated at Lancing College, an independent school, he later studied at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he was Hiring Manager for the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club Committee.
1968
Hare co-founded Portable Theatre Company, acting, directing and writing plays.
1970
Slag was first produced in London at the Hampstead Theatre Club, then at the Royal Court Theatre and New York Shakespeare Festival 1971. Hare was Resident Dramatist at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1970-1 and Resident Dramatist at the Nottingham Playhouse in 1973.
1975
Co-founded Joint Stock Theatre Group with David Aukin and Max Stafford-Clark, for whom he adapted Fanshen, which won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.
1978
Hare's play Plenty was produced at the National Theatre, followed by A Map of the World in 1983, and Pravda in 1985, co-written with Howard Brenton.
1982
Hare founded a film company called Greenpoint Films in 1982, and has written screenplays such as Wetherby, Strapless and Paris by Night.
1984
David Hare became the Associate Director of the National Theatre.
1986
The Bay at Nice premieres at the National Theatre, revived at the Menier Chocolate Factory in 2019. The Secret Rapture followed in 1988, and would be adapted for film in 1994.
1990
The first of Hare's trilogy of plays about major British institutions, Racing Demon, premiered, followed by Murmuring Judges and The Absence of War.
1991
Hare has also written teleplays such as Heading Home (also directed), My Zinc Bed (2008), Collateral (2018) and Roadkill (2020).
1992
Murmuring Judges, the second of Hare's trilogy examining Great British institutions, premieres at the National Theatre.
1993
David Hare's archive – consisting of drafts, notes, scripts, schedules, photographs and correspondence, as well as published texts and translations – is purchased by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
1995
Skylight premieres at the National Theatre, directed by Richard Eyre, winning New York Drama Critics' Circle award as Best Foreign Play. Starring Michael Gambon and Lia Williams, both actors were nominated for Tony Awards.
1997
Member of the jury at the 47th Berlin International Film Festival.
1999
Hare was awarded the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One-Person Show for Via Dolorosa.
2002
Hare wrote the screenplay for The Hours, adapted from the novel by John Cunningham, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
2005
Presenting a lecture series on arts and politics, Hare's Obedience, Struggle, and Revolt questions the role of the theatre and playwright.
2008
Hare adapts Bernhard Schlink's The Reader and receives his second Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
2011
In December 2011, it was announced that his monologue Wall about the Israeli West Bank barrier was being adapted by Cam Christiansen as a documentary by the National Film Board of Canada. Wall premiered at the Calgary International Film Festival in 2017.
2020
David Hare writes Beat the Devil, the first play about the experience of COVID 19, and directs the film, for release on Sky Arts in November 2021
Author Videos
Artist-in-residence David Hare | The New School for Drama
Author Videos
Artist-in-residence David Hare | The New School for Drama
Artist-in-residence David Hare | The New School for Drama
Praise for David Hare

‘Our best writer of contemporary drama.’

Sunday Times
Praise for David Hare

‘Britain’s greatest living playwright.’

Mail on Sunday
Praise for David Hare

‘The foremost theatrical chronicler of contemporary British life.’

New York Times
Praise for David Hare

‘The premiere political dramatist writing in English.’

Washington Post
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