Announcing the 2010 winner of the Yale Drama Prize Memory, history, and culture collide with the starlit rooftop dreams of a myth-inspired character as Soledad and her partner, Hailstorm, redefine family on their own terms after the death of their eldest son in Iraq. blu, steeped in poetic realism and contemporary politics, challenges us to try to imagine a time before war.
Selected as the winner of the 2010 Yale Drama competition from more than 950 submissions, Virginia Grise's play blu takes place in the present but looks back on the not too distant past through a series of prayers, rituals, and dreams. Contest judge David Hare commented, "Virginia Grise is a blazingly talented writer, and her play blu stays with you a long time after you've read it." Noting that 2010 was a banner year for women playwrights, he added, "Women's writing for the theatre is stronger and more eloquent than it has ever been."

blu (Yale Drama Series)

Literature & Fiction

HARE, David

Grise, Virginia

Dramas & Plays

Yale University Press

"Please reject absolutely the crazy . . . suggestion that playwrights don't have intentions . . . They do." In this intimate collection of writings by the author of Stuff Happens and Plenty, David Hare reveals a perspective as meticulously constructed as one of his dramas. In selections ranging from his beginnings as a politically charged upstart in the seventies through to his current position as one of the world's most respected playwrights, Hare skillfully expands upon the prevailing themes of his astounding body of work. With a serious eye on social issues--tempered by a distinct irreverence--Hare dissects the role of entertainment in contemporary society, mapping, in the process, a dynamic new trajectory for post-millennium theater.

Obedience, Struggle and Revolt

Humor & Entertainment

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

“Frank, moving, and beguiling, The Blue Touch Paper is the fascinating story of becoming a writer in the 1960s and 70s when Britain was changing even faster than the author.”―Joan Didion
David Hare has long been one of Britain’s best-known screenwriters and dramatists. He’s the author of more than thirty acclaimed plays that have appeared on Broadway, in the West End, and at the National Theatre. He wrote the screenplays for the hugely successful films The Hours, Plenty, and The Reader. Most recently, his play Skylight won the 2015 Tony Award for Best Revival on Broadway.
Now, in his debut work of autobiography, “Britain’s leading contemporary playwright” (Sunday Times) offers a vibrant and affecting account of becoming a writer amid the enormous flux of postwar England. In his customarily dazzling prose and with great warmth and humor, he takes us from his university days at Cambridge to the swinging 1960s, when he cofounded the influential Portable Theatre in London and took a memorable road trip across America, to his breakthrough successes as a playwright amid the political ferment of the ’70s and the moment when Margaret Thatcher came to power at the end of the decade.
Through it all, Hare sets the progress of his own life against the dramatic changes in postwar England, in which faith in hierarchy, religion, empire, and the public good all withered away. Filled with indelible glimpses of such figures as Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier, Tennessee Williams, Helen Mirren, and Joseph Papp, The Blue Touch Paper is a powerful evocation of a society in transition and a writer in the making. 8 pages of illustrations

The Blue Touch Paper: A Memoir

W.W.Norton&Company

“Extraordinary. . . . This is no butterfly-watching stroll through a life.” ―Dwight Garner, New York Times
David Hare has long been one of Britain’s best-known screenwriters and dramatists. He’s the author of more than thirty acclaimed plays that have appeared on Broadway, in the West End, and at the National Theatre. He wrote the screenplays for the hugely successful films The Hours, Plenty, and The Reader. Most recently, his play Skylight won the 2015 Tony Award for Best Revival on Broadway.
Now, in his debut work of autobiography, “Britain’s leading contemporary playwright” (Sunday Times) offers a vibrant and affecting account of becoming a writer amid the enormous flux of postwar England. In his customarily dazzling prose and with great warmth and humor, he takes us from his university days at Cambridge to the swinging 1960s, when he cofounded the influential Portable Theatre in London and took a memorable road trip across America, to his breakthrough successes as a playwright amid the political ferment of the ’70s and the moment when Margaret Thatcher came to power at the end of the decade.
Through it all, Hare sets the progress of his own life against the dramatic changes in postwar England, in which faith in hierarchy, religion, empire, and the public good all withered away. Filled with indelible glimpses of such figures as Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier, Tennessee Williams, Helen Mirren, and Joseph Papp, The Blue Touch Paper is a powerful evocation of a society in transition and a writer in the making. 8 pages of illustrations

This play ran at the National Theatre, London, throughout 1978 and the New York production in the autumn of 1982 was equally well received. In counterpointing the experiences of an Englishwoman helping the French Resistance during the war with her life in the following twenty years, the author offers a unique view of postwar history, as well as making a powerful statement about changing values and the collapse of ideals embodied in a single life. Plenty is also a major film produced by Edward R. Pressman and Joseph Papp with Mark Seiler as Executive Producer, and directed by Fred Schepisi from a screenplay by David Hare. The cast, headed by double Oscar-winner Meryl Streep, includes Charles Dance, Tracy Ullman, John Gielgud, Sting, Ian McKellen and Sam Neill.

Plenty

Plume

Knuckle (Faber paperbacks)

Faber&Faber

"David Hare's latest play – his wittiest and most assured yet – combines surrealism and satire in a breathlessly fast-moving plot when Curly Delafield, mercenary soldier and gun-runner, eturns to Guildford to find out what has happened to his sister Sarah… 
"Michael Billington said of the play in the Guardian "It's the kind of play I welcome on the West End stage: an attempt to use a pop format, in this case the hard-edged Mickey Spillane thriller, as a vehicle for moral comment … the play is consistently entertaining and, with pleasing irony, uses a commercial stage to atack the degradation of the profit motive." 
"The play first opened at the Comedy Theatre, London on 4 March 1974 with Edward Fox in the leading role." – from the inside front cover

Knuckle

FABER

Teeth 'n' smiles: A play (Faber paperbacks)

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by HARE, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by HARE, David

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by HARE, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

blu (Yale Drama Series)

Obedience, Struggle and Revolt

The Blue Touch Paper: A Memoir

The Blue Touch Paper: A Memoir

Plenty

Plenty

Plenty

Knuckle (Faber paperbacks)

Knuckle

Teeth 'n' smiles: A play (Faber paperbacks)