Editing Howard Barker

{{Short description|British playwright}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2023}}
{{Multiple issues|
{{BLP sources|date=December 2008}}
{{original research|date=December 2008}}
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{{Infobox writer <!-- for more information see [[:Template:Infobox writer/doc]] -->
| name = Howard Barker
| image =
| imagesize = 
| caption = 
| birth_date = 28 June 1946
| birth_place = [[Camberwell]], London, England
| occupation = [[Playwright]], [[theatre director]], [[poet]]
| notableworks = ''[[Scenes from an Execution]]'', ''Victory'', ''[[The Castle (play)|The Castle]]'', ''The Possibilities'', ''The Europeans'', ''Arguments for a Theatre'', ''[[Judith: A Parting from the Body|Judith]]'', ''[[Gertrude - The Cry]]''
| influences =
| influenced = 
}}

'''Howard Barker'''<ref>{{cite web |title=Index entry |url=http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=euMmoBkGYY1aPc8aabxuxg&scan=1 |work=FreeBMD |publisher=ONS |access-date=12 October 2011}}</ref> (born 28 June 1946)<ref>{{cite web |title=Howard Barker Biography (1946-) |url=http://www.filmreference.com/film/74/Howard-Barker.html |publisher=Filmreference.com |access-date=21 December 2008}}</ref> is a British [[playwright]], [[screenwriter]] and writer of [[radio drama]], [[painter]], [[poet]], and [[essayist]], writing predominantly on playwriting and the theatre.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.thewrestlingschool.co.uk/barker.html |title=Howard Barker webpage on The Wrestling School website |access-date=6 August 2004 |archive-date=15 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230315050125/http://www.thewrestlingschool.co.uk/barker.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> The author of an extensive body of dramatic works since the 1970s, he is best known for his plays ''[[Scenes from an Execution]]'',<ref name=Arguments4>{{cite book |last=Barker |first=Howard |title=Arguments for a Theatre |at=back cover |publisher=Oberon Books |location=London |edition=fourth |date=2016 |isbn=9781783198054}}</ref><ref name=Arguments3>{{cite book |last=Barker |first=Howard |author-link=Howard Barker |title=Arguments for a Theatre |at=back cover |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jRDgYQw7IlsC&pg=PT7 |publisher=[[Manchester University Press]] |location=Manchester, UK |edition=third |date=15 November 1997 |isbn=0719052491}}</ref><ref name=Death&Art>{{cite book |last=Barker |first=Howard |title=Death, the One and the Art of Theatre |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NSGcXtqRpRUC&q=Howard%20Barker%20%22best%20known%22&pg=PP5 |date=2004 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=0-415-34986-9 |edition=Kindle}}</ref> ''Victory'',<ref name=Death&Art/> ''[[The Castle (play)|The Castle]]'',<ref name=Death&Art/><ref name=Arguments3/> ''The Possibilities'',<ref name=Arguments3/><ref name=Arguments4/> ''The Europeans'', ''[[Judith: A Parting from the Body|Judith]]''<ref name=Arguments4/> and ''[[Gertrude – The Cry]]''<ref name=Death&Art/><ref name=Arguments4/> as well as being a founding member of, primary playwright for and stage designer for British theatre company [[The Wrestling School]].

==The Theatre of Catastrophe==
Barker has coined the term "Theatre of Catastrophe" to describe his work.<ref name="Barker">{{cite book |last=Barker |first=Howard |title=Arguments for a Theatre |publisher=Manchester University Press |location=Manchester, UK |edition=third |date=15 November 1997 |isbn=978-0-7190-5249-1}}</ref> His plays often explore [[violence]], [[Human sexuality|sexuality]], the desire for [[Power (philosophy)|power]], human [[motivation]] and the limits of language.

Rejecting the widespread notion that an audience should share a single response to the events onstage, Barker works to fragment response, forcing each viewer to wrestle with the play alone.{{Citation needed|date=December 2008}} "We must overcome the urge to do things in unison", he writes. "To chant together, to hum banal tunes together, is not collectivity."<ref name="Barker"/> Where other playwrights might clarify a scene, Barker seeks to render it more complex, ambiguous, and unstable.{{Citation needed|date=December 2008}}

Only through a tragic renaissance, Barker argues, will beauty and poetry return to the stage. "Tragedy liberates language from banality", he asserts. "It returns poetry to speech."{{Citation needed|date=October 2015}}

==Themes==
Barker frequently turns to historical events for inspiration. His play ''[[Scenes from an Execution]]'', for example, centers on the aftermath of the [[Battle of Lepanto (1571)]] and a fictional female artist commissioned to create a commemorative painting of the [[Venice|Venetian]] victory over the [[Ottoman Empire|Ottoman]] fleet. ''Scenes from an Execution'', originally written for [[BBC Radio 3]] and starring [[Glenda Jackson]] in 1984, was later adapted for the stage. The short play ''Judith'' revolves around the Biblical story of [[Book of Judith|Judith]], the legendary heroine who [[decapitate]]d the invading general [[Holofernes]].

In other plays, Barker has fashioned responses to famous literary works. ''Brutopia'' is a challenge to [[Thomas More]]'s ''[[Utopia (More book)|Utopia]]''. ''Minna'' is a sardonic work inspired by [[Gotthold Ephraim Lessing]]'s [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] comedy ''Minna von Barnhelm''. In ''Uncle Vanya'', he poses an alternative vision to [[Anton Chekhov]]'s [[Uncle Vanya|drama of the same name]]. For Barker, Chekhov is a playwright of [[bad faith]], a writer who encourages us to sentimentalize our own weaknesses and glamorize inertia. Beneath Chekhov's celebrated compassion, Barker argues, lies contempt. In his play, Barker has Chekhov walk into Vanya's world and express his disdain for him. "Vanya, I have such a withering knowledge of your soul," says the Russian playwright. "Its pitiful dimensions. It is smaller than an aspirin that fizzles in a glass. . ."<ref>{{cite book |last=Barker |first=Howard |title=Collected Plays Vol. 2: Includes Love of a Good Man, the Possibilities, Brutopia, Rome, Uncle Vanya, and Ten Dilemmas |publisher=Calder |location=London |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-7145-4182-2}}</ref> However, Chekhov dies, and Vanya finds the resoluteness to stride out of the confines of his creator's world.

Barker's [[protagonist]]s are conflicted, often perverse, and their motivations appear enigmatic. In ''A Hard Heart'', Riddler, described by the playwright as "A Woman of Originality",<ref>{{cite book |last=Barker |first=Howard |title=A Hard Heart; The Early Hours of a Reviled Man |publisher=Riverrun Press |location=London |year=1992 |isbn=978-0-7145-4228-7}}</ref> is called upon to use her considerable brilliance in fortifications and tactics to save her besieged city. Each choice she makes appears to render the city more vulnerable to attack, but that outcome seems to exhilarate rather than upset her. "My mind was engine-like in its perfection," she exults in the midst of destruction.{{Citation needed|date=October 2015}} Barker's heroes are drawn into the heart of the [[paradox]]ical, fascinated by contradiction.

The 1995 edition of the encyclopaedic ''The Cambridge Guide to Theatre'' describes Barker as a playwright "adept at choosing telling dramatic situations in which many different incidents can take place, but he reverses what might be regarded as the moral expectations [as well as] the expected moral order of capitalist societies. […] Barker deliberately attempts to upset expectations, denying the value of reason, continuity and naturalism, but there is a certain predictability about his wildness. His characters seem to be at emotional extremes, to speak in the same overwrought, rhetorical language."<ref name=CambridgeGuide>{{cite book |last=Banham |first=Martin |title=The Cambridge Guide to Theatre |date=2000 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=United Kingdom |isbn=0-521-43437-8 |page=78 |edition=Corrected |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8qMTPAPFGXUC&dq=cambridge%20guide%20to%20theatre&pg=PA78 |access-date=15 February 2021}}</ref>

==Productions==
Barker has acknowledged he has had greater success as playwright internationally than in his home country of Britain and many of his plays have been translated into other languages. He has noted that his plays have been more successful when performed abroad in [[America]], [[Australia]] and [[Europe]],<ref>[http://www.thewrestlingschool.co.uk/twspages/barker.html interview with Howard Barker by Nick Hobbes on ''The Wrestling School'' Website]</ref> especially [[mainland Europe]] where Barker has been celebrated as "one of the major writers of modern European theatre".

In Britain, Barker is "largely unknown" and he has been described as "cut[ting] a [[Byronic]] dash in British Theatre – sardonic, detached, the insider's outsider."<ref name=CambridgeGuide/> Barker's work has influenced and inspired a number of notable British playwrights, including [[Sarah Kane]], [[David Greig (dramatist)|David Greig]],<ref>{{cite news |last=Hattenstone |first=Simon |title=A sad hurrah |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/jul/01/stage |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=1 July 2000}}</ref> [[Lucy Kirkwood]],<ref>{{cite news |last=Hemming |first=Sarah |title=Lucy Kirkwood on going from kitchen to courthouse with 'The Welkin' |url=https://www.ft.com/content/2cccd7de-3228-11ea-a329-0bcf87a328f2 |access-date=11 October 2020 |work=Financial Times |location=London |date=10 January 2020}}</ref> and [[Dennis Kelly (writer)|Dennis Kelly]].<ref>{{cite interview |last1=Kelly |first1=Dennis |last2=Aberg |first2=Maria |interviewer=Aleks Sierz |title=DENNIS KELLY AND MARIA ABERG: THE GODS WEEP |url=http://www.theatrevoice.com/audio/dennis-kelly-and-maria-aberg-the-gods-weep/ |work=TheatreVoice |type=Interview: Audio |date=4 March 2005 |access-date=19 March 2010}}</ref> Noted actors [[Ian McDiarmid]]<ref>{{cite web |title=Past Productions |url=http://www.thewrestlingschool.co.uk/past.html |access-date=17 August 2015 |archive-date=2 June 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160602034326/http://www.thewrestlingschool.co.uk/past.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> and [[Fiona Shaw]]<ref>{{cite web |title=Scenes from an Execution, National Theatre, review |date=5 October 2012 |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/9590236/Scenes-from-an-Execution-National-Theatre-review.html}}</ref> have received acclaim for their performances in Barker's plays.<ref>{{cite news |last=Irvine |first=Lindesay |title=Podcast: Howard Barker talks |url=https://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2006/dec/06/podcasthowardbarkertalks |work=The Guardian |location=London |date=6 December 2006 |access-date=21 December 2008}}</ref>

In Britain, Howard Barker formed The Wrestling School Company in 1988 to produce his own work in his native country.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Wrestling School |url=http://www.thewrestlingschool.co.uk/tws.html |publisher=Thewrestlingschool.co.uk |access-date=21 December 2008 |archive-date=28 May 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160528210740/http://www.thewrestlingschool.co.uk/tws.html |url-status=dead }}</ref>

There has been a small flurry of productions of Barker's plays on the London Fringe since 2007, including some non-Wrestling School productions which seem to fare better critically. Notable among these have been ''Victory''<ref>{{cite news |last=Gardner |first=Lyn |title=Victory |url=https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2009/mar/10/victory-arcola-london-review |work=The Guardian |location=London |date=10 March 2009 |access-date=4 May 2010}}</ref> and ''Scenes from An Execution'',<ref>{{cite news |last=Gardner |first=Lyn |title=Scenes from an Execution |url=https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2007/jan/17/theatre1 |work=The Guardian |location=London |date=17 January 2007 |access-date=4 May 2010}}</ref> which received acclaimed productions at the Arcola and the Hackney Empire respectively. In 2012 the [[Royal National Theatre|National Theatre]] staged a production of ''Scenes from an Execution'', starring Fiona Shaw and [[Tim McInnerny]].

==Works==

===Stage plays===
* ''Cheek'' (1970)
* ''No One Was Saved'' (1970) – Script unpublished
* ''Edward – the Final Days'' (1972) – Script unpublished
* ''Alpha Alpha'' (1972) – Script unpublished
* ''Faceache'' (1972) – Script unpublished
* ''Skipper'' (1973) – Script unpublished
* ''My Sister and I'' (1973) – Script unpublished
* ''Rule Britannia'' (1973) – Script unpublished
* ''Bang'' (1973) – Script unpublished
* ''Claw'' (1975)
* ''Stripwell'' (1975)
* ''Wax'' (1976) – Script unpublished
* ''Fair Slaughter'' (1977)
* ''That Good Between Us'' (1977)
* ''Birth on a Hard Shoulder'' (1977)
* ''Downchild'' (1977)
* ''The Hang of the Gaol'' (1978)
* ''The Love of a Good Man'' (1978)
* ''The Loud Boy's Life'' (1980)
* ''Crimes in Hot Countries'' (1980) (also performed as ''Twice Dead'')
* ''No End of Blame'' (1981)
* ''The Poor Man's Friend'' (1981)
* ''The Power of the Dog'' (1981)
* ''Victory'' (1983)
* ''A Passion in Six Days'' (1983)
* ''[[The Castle (play)|The Castle]]'' (1985)
* ''[[Women Beware Women]]'', adaptation of [[Thomas Middleton]] (1986)
* ''The Possibilities'' (1986)
* ''The Bite of the Night'' (1986)
* ''The Europeans'' (1987)
* ''The Last Supper'' (1988)
* ''Rome'' (1989)
* ''Seven Lears''(1989)
* ''Golgo'' (1989)
* ''(Uncle) Vanya'', adaptation of [[Chekhov]]'s ''[[Uncle Vanya]]'' (1991)
* ''Ten Dilemas in the Life of a God'' (1992)
* ''[[Judith: A Parting from the Body]]'' (1992)
* ''Ego in Arcadia'' (1992)
* ''A Hard Heart'' (1992)
* ''Minna'', adaptation of [[Gotthold Ephraim Lessing|Lessing's]] ''[[Minna von Barnhelm]]'' (1993)
* ''All He Fears'', a specialist play for [[marionettes]] (1993)
*''The Early Hours of a Reviled Man''
*''Stalingrad''
*''12 Encounters with a Prodigy''
*''The Twelfth Battle of Isonzo'' (2001)
*''Found in the Ground''
*''The Swing at Night'', a specialist play for [[marionettes]] (2001)
*''Knowledge and a Girl''
*''Hated Nightfall'' and ''Wounds to the Face'' (1995)
*''The Gaoler's Ache for the Nearly Dead'' (1997)
*''Ursula; Fear of the Estuary'' (1998)
*''Und'' (1999)
*''The Ecstatic Bible'' (2000) Prizewinner Adelaide International Festival co-production Brink Theatre (SA) and Wrestling School
*''He Stumbled'' (2000)
*''A House of Correction'' (2001)
*''[[Gertrude - The Cry]]'' (2002)
*''13 Objects'' and ''Summer School'' (2003)
*''Dead Hands'' (2004)
*''The Fence in Its Thousandth Year'' (2005)
*''[[The Seduction of Almighty God by the Boy Priest Loftus in the Abbey of Calcetto, 1539]]'' (2006)
*''Christ's Dog'' (2006)
*''The Forty (Few Words)'' (2006)
*''I Saw Myself'' (2008)
*''[[The Dying of Today]]'' (2008)
*''A Wounded Knife'' (2009)

===Radio plays===
* ''One afternoon on the 63rd level of the north face of the pyramid of Cheops the Great'' (1970) – Script unpublished.
* ''Henry V in two parts'' (1971) – Script unpublished.
* ''Herman, with Mille and Mick'' (1972) – Script unpublished.
* ''[[Scenes from an Execution]]'' (1984)
* ''The Early Hours of a Reviled Man'' (1990)
* ''A Hard Heart'' (1992)
* ''A House of Correction'' (1999)
* ''Albertina'' (1999)
* ''Knowledge and a Girl'' (2002)
* ''The Moving and the Still'' (2003) – Broadcast in 2004.
* ''The Quick and the Dead'', [[BBC Radio 3|Radio 3]] (2004)
* ''Two skulls'', broadcast on Danish radio (2005)
* ''The Road, The House, The Road'' (2006) broadcast on [[BBC Radio 4|Radio 4]] to commemorate his sixtieth birthday.
* ''Let Me'' (2006) broadcast to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the Third Programme (Radio 3)

===Television plays and films===
* ''Cows'' (1972)
* ''[[Made (1972 film)|Made (1972)]]'' feature film based on his play ''No One Was Saved''.
* ''Mutinies'' (1974)
* ''The Chauffeur and the Lady'' (1974)
* ''Prowling Offensive'' (1975) – not transmitted
* ''Conrod''
* ''[[Aces High (film)|Aces High]]'' (1976) feature film adapted from [[R.C. Sheriff]]'s play ''[[Journey's End]]''.
* ''Heroes of Labour'' (1976) – unproduced
* ''All Bleeding'' (1976) – unproduced
* ''Credentials of a Sympathiser'' (1976)
* ''Sympathiser'' (1977) – unproduced
* ''Russia'' (1977) – unproduced
* ''Heaven'' (1978) – unproduced
* ''Pity in History'' (1984)
* ''The Blow'', film (1985)
* ''Brutopia'' (1989)
* ''Christ's Dog'' (2011) short film adapted from his play of the same name. 
* ''In Mid Wickedness'' (2013) short film in the [[Georgian language]] adapted from his play ''The Forty''. 
* ''Not Him'' (2014) short film based on Barker's short play of the same name from ''The Possibilities''.
* ''Don't Exaggerate'' (2015) short film adapted from Howard Barker's work of the same name.

===Other writings===
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]]), the text for ''Flesh and Blood'', a dramatic scene for two singers and orchestra by [[David Sawer]], and three collections of writings on the theatre (''Arguments for a Theatre'', ''Death, The One and The Art of Theatre'', ''A Style And Its Origins'').

==Personal life==
Barker divorced in the 1980s and has lived on his own in Brighton since then.<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2012/oct/01/howard-barker-scenes-execution "Howard Barker: 'I don't care if you listen or not'"], ''The Guardian'', 1 October 2012</ref>

==Further reading==
*{{cite book |last=Barker |first=Howard |title=Death, The One and the Art of Theatre |publisher=[[Routledge]] |edition=first |date=30 September 2004 |isbn=9780415349871}}
*{{cite book |last1=Barker |first1=Howard |last2=Houth |first2=Eduardo |title=A Style and Its Origins |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Hpju23vLxcoC&pg=PP1 |publisher=Oberon Books |location=London |edition=first |date=2007 |isbn=9781840027181}}
*{{cite book |last=Barker |first=Howard |title=Arguments for a Theatre |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YTU2DwAAQBAJ&q=arguments%20for%20a%20theatre&pg=PP1 |publisher=Oberon Books |location=London |edition=fourth |date=July 2016 |isbn=9781783198054}}
*{{cite book |last=Brown |first=Mark |title=Howard Barker Interviews 1980–2010: Conversations in Catastrophe |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8CCV1Z_Zw8YC&q=howard%20barker&pg=PP1 |publisher=Intellect Books |edition=first |date=15 June 2011 |isbn=9781841503981}}
*{{cite book |last=Rabey |first=David Ian |author-link=David Ian Rabey |title=Howard Barker: Politics and Desire: An Expository Study of His Drama and Poetry, 1969-87 |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |edition=2009 |date=2009 |isbn=9780230577404}}
*Rabey, David Ian (2009), ''Howard Barker: Ecstasy and Death: An Expository Study of His Drama, Theory and Production Work, 1988-2008'', Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781403994738
*{{cite book |last=Lamb |first=Charles |title=The Theatre of Howard Barker |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KtrpzJ0C83gC&pg=PP1 |publisher=Routledge |edition=second |date=2005 |isbn=9780415315319}}
* Rabey, David Ian, and Goldingay, Sarah (eds.; 2013), ''Howard Barker's Art of Theatre: Essays on His Plays, Poetry and Production Work'', [[Manchester University Press]]. ISBN 9780719089299

==References==
{{reflist}}

== External links ==
* [http://www.howardbarker.co.uk Official Site]
* [http://www.thewrestlingschool.co.uk/barker.html The Wrestling School's page on Barker] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230315050125/http://www.thewrestlingschool.co.uk/barker.html |date=15 March 2023 }}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110714182316/http://www.nietzschecircle.com/Hyp_May_10.pdf] Special section on Howard Barker in ''Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics'', Vol. V, Issue 1, May 2010. This features "Cruelty, Beauty, and the Tragic Art of Howard Barker" by Rainer J. Hanshe, "Access to the Body: The Theatre of Revelation in Beckett, Foreman, and Barker" by George Hunka, excerpts from Barker's ''Death, The One, and The Art of Theatre'', which is introduced by Karoline Gritzner, and "The Sunless Garden of the Unconsoled: Some Destinations Beyond Catastrophe", a new and previously unpublished essay by Howard Barker, which is introduced by David Kilpatrick. The section also features high-resolution color reproductions of numerous paintings of Barker's.

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Barker, Howard}}
[[Category:British dramatists and playwrights]]
[[Category:1946 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:British male dramatists and playwrights]]