David Hare: Artistic Directors Confuse 'What Is Popular With What Is Good'

Since making his Broadway debut in 1983 with the Tony-nominated PLENTY, David Hare has been one of New York's most frequently produced living British playwrights, with ten of his works, including THE SECRET RAPTURE, SKYLIGHT, THE BLUE ROOM, THE VERTICAL HOUR and his solo performance VIA DOLOROSA hitting these shores.

But he's never had a long run on Broadway; a fact that, as suggested by his recent speech at the Festival at Hampstead Theatre, he might take as a compliment.

As quoted by The Stage, the 68-year-old scribe explains that his time as literary manager for the Royal Court in London at the age of 21 taught him that "anything good was going to be massively unpopular."

As an example, he cites Edward Bond's SAVED which premiered at the Royal Court in 1965. Though "thought to be the great classic of the period," it played to merely 25% capacity. Hare claims that an eye on box office receipts has artistic directors overlooking cutting-edge work and confusing "what is popular with what is good".

"We were taught to believe the critics are wrong about everything and if anything is of any value it will be playing to absolutely nobody. The idea of a pioneering, cutting-edge avant-garde, I am afraid, has more or less completely disappeared from the British theatre, and now you just have every artistic director with his or her eye on the box office, because that is the mood of the times."

Hare also said that the industry needed more young blood if it was to remain relevant. "Theatre does belong to the young, the news from the street has to be brought in by the young. They have to come into the theatre and say 'You have got all this wrong, you are a cozy inward-looking art form and we are bringing the news.'"

"Unless we can get the young into the theatre again it won't seem as important, I don't think," adding that he and his contemporaries saw little encouragement from the reviewing press at the start of their careers.

"They wanted to kill us, and didn't want us to even get out of the delivery room. They believed we would ruin the theatre because we would bring all these appalling concerns about politics and the wider world into an art form they thought should be fun and light."

Hare's THE RED BARN premieres at the National Theatre in October. Visit nationaltheatre.org.uk.

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