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David Harrower | |
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| Born | 1966 (age 56–57) Edinburgh, Scotland |
| Occupation | Playwright |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | Scottish |
| Years active | 1995–present |
| Notable works | |
David Harrower (born 1966) is a Scottish playwright who (as of 2005) lives in Glasgow. Harrower has published over 10 original works, as well as numerous translations and adaptations.
Harrower's first play, Knives in Hens, which premiered at Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre in 1995, was considered a critical and popular success. It deals with a relationship triangle in a rural setting, and a woman's internal quest to find out what she wants from life.
Subsequent plays include Kill the Old Torture Their Young (Traverse, 1998), which follows a disparate group of characters across an unnamed city, mixing realism with poetry and fantasy. Presence (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, April 2001) takes another look at the Beatles' residency at the Indra club in Hamburg on the eve of their success, and Dark Earth (Traverse, August 2003) begins as a broad comedy and turns into a speculation about the meaning of history and the land.
Harrower has also written adaptations including: The Chrysalids (1999), adapted from John Wyndham's novel, for the National Theatre's Connections project; Six Characters Looking for an Author, a version of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author , first staged at the Young Vic in 2000; Chekhov's Ivanov (2002), performed at the National Theatre; and Buchner's Woyzeck , performed at the Edinburgh Lyceum in 2002.
He has also translated The Girl on the Sofa (2002), by Jon Fosse, presented in a joint production by the Edinburgh International Festival and the Schaubuhne, Berlin, and Schiller's Mary Stuart for the National Theatre of Scotland/Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh/Citizens' Theatre, Glasgow.
In 2005, his play Blackbird was produced by the Edinburgh International Festival, directed by Peter Stein and transferred in February 2006 to the Albery Theatre in London's West End [1] It depicts the meeting between a young woman and a middle-aged man who, fifteen years earlier when she was twelve years old, kidnapped and raped her. In April 2008 the play was revived by David Grindley at the Rose Theatre, Kingston prior to a national tour . In 2011, this play was produced by Rogue Machine in Los Angeles. This production won the LA Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Writing and Lead Performance by Sam Anderson.
His play 365 was presented by the National Theatre of Scotland at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2008, directed by Vicky Featherstone. The play recounts the stories of 14 young people who have been in care are now living on their own in 'practice flats'. It was subsequently performed in London at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith.
In 2011, he wrote a new version of Gogol's classic text, The Government Inspector , produced at London's Young Vic Theatre, directed by Richard Jones and starring The Mighty Boosh 's Julian Barratt and Smack the Pony 's Doon Mackichan and Kyle Soller.
Woyzeck is a stage play written by Georg Büchner. Büchner wrote the play between July and October 1836, yet left it incomplete at his death in February 1837. The play first appeared in 1877 in a heavily edited version by Karl Emil Franzos, and was first performed at the Residence Theatre in Munich on 8 November 1913.
In-yer-face theatre is a term used to describe a confrontational style and sensibility of drama that emerged in Great Britain in the 1990s. This term was borrowed by British theatre critic Aleks Sierz as the title of his book, In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today, first published by Faber and Faber in March 2001.
Simon Stephens is an English playwright and Professor of Scriptwriting at Manchester Metropolitan University. Having taught on the Young Writers' Programme at the Royal Court Theatre for many years, he is now an Artistic Associate at the Lyric Hammersmith. He is the inaugural Associate Playwright of Steep Theatre Company, Chicago, where four of his plays, Harper Regan,Motortown, Wastwater, and Birdland had their U.S. premieres. His writing is widely performed throughout Europe and, along with Dennis Kelly and Martin Crimp, he is one of the most performed English-language writers in Germany.
Outlying Islands is a 2002 drama play written by Scottish playwright David Greig. While all the events and characters in the play are works of fiction, it was inspired by Robert Atkinson's book Island Going.
Ivanov is a four-act drama by the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov.
The Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland (CATS) are an annual event awarding performances "substantially produced in Scotland, or developed, rehearsed and premiered in Scotland".
The Traverse Theatre is a theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was founded as The Traverse Theatre Club in 1962 by John Calder, John Malcolm, Jim Haynes, Richard Demarco, Terry Lane, Andrew Muir, John Martin and Sheila Colvin.
Martin Andrew Crimp is a British playwright.
David Greig is a Scottish playwright and theatre director. His work has been performed at many of the major theatres in Britain, including the Traverse Theatre, Royal Court Theatre, Royal National Theatre, Royal Lyceum Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, and been produced around the world.
Blackbird is a 2005 play written by Scottish playwright David Harrower. It was inspired in part by the crimes of sex offender Toby Studebaker, and depicts a young woman meeting a middle-aged man fifteen years after being sexually abused by him when she was twelve.
Platonov is the name in English given to an early, untitled play in four acts written by Anton Chekhov in 1878. It was the first large-scale drama by Chekhov, written specifically for Maria Yermolova, rising star of Maly Theatre. Yermolova rejected the play and it was not published until 1923.
Naturalism is a movement in European drama and theatre that developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It refers to theatre that attempts to create an illusion of reality through a range of dramatic and theatrical strategies. Interest in naturalism especially flourished with the French playwrights of the time, but the most successful example is Strindberg's play Miss Julie, which was written with the intention to abide by both his own particular version of naturalism, and also the version described by the French novelist and literary theoretician, Emile Zola.
John Retallack is a British playwright and director.
Gregory Motton is a British playwright and author. Best known for the originality of his formally demanding, largely a-political theatre plays at the Royal Court in the 1980s and 1990s, state of the nation satires in the 1990s, and later for his polemics about working class politics, A Working Class Alternative To Labour and Helping Themselves – The Left Wing Middle Classes In Theatre And The Arts.
Sabrina Mahfouz is a British-Egyptian poet, playwright, performer and writer from South London, England. Her published work includes poetry, plays and contributions to several anthologies.
Presence is the third full-length play by Scottish playwright David Harrower. It portrays a fictionalised account of the Beatles' first residency in Hamburg.
Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour is a play based on the 1998 novel The Sopranos by Alan Warner, adapted for the stage by Lee Hall. It received its world premiere at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, in August 2015, before embarking on a short UK tour. The play is a co-production between the National Theatre of Scotland and Live Theatre. The production ran at London's National Theatre in August 2016 and was scheduled to transfer to the West End's Duke of York's Theatre in May 2017.
Yaël Farber is a South African director and playwright.
Landmark Productions is a theatre production company in Dublin, Ireland. Established in 2003 by Anne Clarke, Landmark produces plays in Ireland and tours Irish work abroad. The company has an association with a number of Irish writers including Enda Walsh and Paul Howard, the creator of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly. Recent award-winning productions include Enda Walsh’s Ballyturk and Arlington, Conall Morrison’s Woyzeck in Winter and the Donnacha Dennehy/Enda Walsh operas The Last Hotel and The Second Violinist.
Isobel Noeline Waller-Bridge is a British composer who is known for her scores for film, television, and theatre, along with her works for electronic music and contemporary classical music.
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