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David Hare

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David Hare was born in England on June 5, 1947. He joined the realm of the playwrights in 1968 putting on shows in the Public Theater. Eventually he became very well-known and now has upwards of thirty plays that he has contributed to as well as many screenplays and a book. He was knighted in 1998. Stuff Happens, Hare’s drama about the path that was walked straight to the war in Iraq, is quite typical of his work. Michael Billington refers to Hare as a “social commentator” and that his work “has been concerned with modern Britain and with society’s apparent failure to live up to the idealism of the post-war period.” Hare gives his audiences pieces that are relevant to them and that focus on events that may actually affect them. This is one …show more content…

While many lines, particularly those when the characters are addressing the audience, are verbatim and taken from public record, Hare states that almost 75% of the play is purely guesswork. Regarding these assumptions that he made on what exactly went on behind closed doors, Hare admitted on Theater Talk that “Interestingly nobody has ever challenged it. One or two of the people at the center of events have said that I’ve misemphasized, but they usually said it privately to me.” This shows that Hare, ultimately, did a very good job of representing the political powers that had a hand in these events. Some of the most important of these being George Bush and Colin Powell. In their interview, Hare tells Reidel that, while Powell had immense political power, he did nothing to aid in dealing with Iraq in his own, less war driven, manner because “he was politically outmaneuvered by Bush.” David Hare does something very different with Bush’s character from many other people at the time, saying that while he respects those that satirize him into a bumbling idiot he wants to take into consideration how influential Bush is and the kind of lasting effect that Bush’s actions are going to have, and take him seriously. Reidel notes that when he saw this play in London a year prior to the interview that there is “this smug, superior, British laughter at [Bush] initially” and then after seeing

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