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Other authors named Howard:
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Author's popularity: -2
Vote:  
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If you like or dislike this author in general or one or more of their quotes in particular, please give us your feedback by clicking on the icon to vote for, or the icon to vote against them.
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Popularity: 2
Vote: | Certainly I never write for utilitarian reasons - to help others understand issues, to improve society and so on. I regard those as fatuous pretexts. Let us keep social work out of the theatre. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | I am compelled to write because I have an artist's personality, it is a psychologically-determined thing, one best not explored perhaps. But I write because I must. And frequently I do not know what I am writing, and can talk of what I've written only a long time afterwards. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | I am so far as I am aware not at all influenced by dramatists, expect for Shakespeare, who I have to say, it is impossible not to be influenced by if you hold language to be the major element of theatre. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | I have plenty of political views and plenty of social and personal prejudices. I do not, however, value them. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | I never 'say' anything in my work. I invent a world. Let others decide what is being 'said'. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | I submit all my plays to the National Theatre for rejection. To assure myself I am seeing clearly. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | The English (I cannot speak of the Scots) are moralistic, and have made moralizing their discipline since the reformation. They like to be told what to think, and their literary heroes are moralists. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | Tragedy is the greatest art form of all. It gives us the courage to continue with our life by exposing us to the pain of life. It is unsentimental, it takes us seriously as human beings, it is not condescending. Paradoxically, by seeing pain we are made greater, it becomes a need. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | We are suffocated by writers who want to enlighten us with their truths. For me, the theatre is beautiful because it is a secret, and secrets seduce us, we all want to share secrets. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | When I write, I am not giving a lecture, I am speculating on behavior. Sometimes this is dangerous, but it should be. As I say often, theatre is a dark place and we should keep the light out of it. |
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Biography
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Howard Barker (born 1946) is a British playwright.
Barker describes his works using the term "Theatre of Catastrophe," and his plays often explore violence, sexuality, the desire for power, and human motivation.
In his writing, Barker usually makes little attempt to adhere to realism or a specific ideological message, and instead it is left to his audience to find meaning in what they see and hear on stage.
Barker frequently turns to historical events and famous texts for inspiration. His play Scenes from an Execution, for example, centers on the aftermath of the Battle of Lepanto (1571) and a fictional artist commissioned to create a commemorative painting of the Venetian victory over the Ottoman fleet. The short play Judith revolves around the Biblical story of Judith, the legendary heroine who decapitated the invading general Holofernes.
Though in his own country he is relatively unknown among modern playwrights, Barker's works have earned him a sizable following on the European mainland, and many of his plays have been translated into various languages. In Britain, a theatre company called the Wrestling School was formed in 1988 by admirers of Barker's works to produce the author's seldom-performed plays in his native country. Their name is an allusion to the idea that performers and other theatre professionals must "wrestle" with the ideas presented in the text before presenting them to the public, a notion of conflict and struggle in line with the spirit of Barker's writing.
Barker's plays include: Claw, Victory, The Love of a Good Man, The Power of the Dog, Scenes from an Execution, The Castle, The Europeans, A Hard Heart, Seven Lears, The Bite of the Night, The Possibilities, Rome, Hated Nightfall, Judith, The Gaoler's Ache for the Nearly Dead, He Stumbled, A House of Correction, Ursula; Fear of the Estuary, Wounds to the Face, Gertrude - The Cry, and Thirteen Objects.
Barker has also authored several volumes of poetry (Don't Exaggerate, The Breath of the Crowd, Gary the Thief, Lullabies for the Impatient, The Ascent of Monte Grappa, and The Tortman Diaries), an opera (Terrible Mouth with music by Nigel Osborne), and two collections of writings on the theatre (Arguments for a Theatre and Death, The One and The Art of Theatre).
External link * The Wrestling School's page on Barker
...(more on Wikipedia)
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Howard Barker".
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