Howard Barker

Barker's texts are constructed on the premise that theatre is a necessity in society, a place for imagination and moral speculation, not constrained by the demands of realism or any ideology. Barker describes his work with the term Theatre of Catastrophe. In Barker's work, no attempt is made to satisfy any demand for clarity or the deceptive simplicity of a single 'message'; each performance is like a public challenge in which actors and audience are inspired to find meaning and resonance from a multiplicity of interpretations. 

Long considered the enfant terrible of contemporary British theatre and the subject of heated debate, whether loved or hated, his plays are impossible to ignore. 

On the European mainland especially, Barker is considered one of the major writers of modern European theatre. In the last three years, 27 of his works have been staged in six languages in 17 countries as diverse as Canada, New Zealand and Slovenia. Yet in Britain, his home country, he is largely unknown; during this period there have been just four productions of his plays. 

Barker has also written a number of volumes of poetry and a collection of essays on the nature of theatre, published as Arguments For A Theatre (Manchester University Press). 

Interview with Howard Barker by Nick Hobbes

Plays 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  (Uncle) Vanya  He Stumbled  A House of Correction  Ursula; Fear of the Estuary  Gertrude The Cry All published by Calder Publications  126 Cornwall Road  London SE1 8TQ  Tel: +44 (0)171 633 0599
	Poetry Don't Exaggerate  The Breath of the Crowd  Gary the Thief  Lullabies for the Impatient  The Ascent of Monte Grappa  The Tortman Diaries  All published by Calder Publications  [as left]	Opera Terrible Mouth (Music by Nigel Osborne)  Universal Edition
	Essays Arguments for a Theatre (3rd Edition)  Manchester University Press

Howard Barker plays in French translation:

Les Sept Lears ISBN 2-905158-99-9
Tableau d'une Execution ISBN 2-905158-81-6
Les Europeens ISBN 2-87282-227-5
N'Exageres Pas ISBN 2-8774-4145

Interview with Howard Barker by Nick Hobbes
From the programme for Scenes From an Execution   Dundee Rep April 2004

Can you explain a little about your life and background and how and why you started writing plays?
I was born in 1946. I came from a family of laundresses, policemen, soldiers, barmaids and tram drivers. I did not visit the theatre. None of us did. I had no prejudice against it, I knew nothing of it. When I came to the theatre I found it a difficult and hostile place. For all its socialist rhetoric it was and remains narcissistic and snobbish. Perhaps it always was. Perhaps it is a condition of its artistic form, after all, for all its pretensions to telling the truth that is precisely what it doesn't do, which is why I am drawn to it.

How would you describe your work? What have you tried to say in your plays?
I never 'say' anything in my work. I invent a world. Let others decide what is being 'said'. Nor do I claim to tell the truth or enlighten people. 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. That is also its politics, if it has any politics at all. And modern democracies hate secrets, they want everything transparent. Obviously the critics collaborate in this desire to expose everything to the light of day, they are the police force, after all. My work is characterized by one thing above all --- invention. In theatre we imagine the world, we do not record it, we are not documentary makers. I hold all social realism and journalistic theatre in contempt. It is a sordid habit. And the social realists have the impertinence to pretend they are 'telling the truth…'

Can you describe some of your influences as a writer?
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. Poets have mattered more to me, and these Europeans, above all Apollinaire, Rilke, Celan, Attila Jozsef. But serious artists make their own voice, and here too I affirm the value of invention - I do not pretend my characters speak the language of the street - a peculiar ambition of naturalistic writers - their discourse is a mixture of high literary tone and the sort of slang I learned in South London in my childhood, a rich metaphorical voice that reached back to the middle ages. I knew this when my mother swore at me, there were rhythms and words in her mouth that were atavistic, and beautiful too. So from different sources I made a language specially fitted for theatre. In more recent works, this is yet further developed.

Why do you write about the things you do? What drives you?
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. 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.

You describe your work as Theatre of Catastrophe. Can you elucidate upon that a little?
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. There is nothing 'pessimistic' about this. Tragedy doesn't understand pessimism, it's a critic's word. Tragedy tells us what the world is - it doesn't explain the world. My own tragedies (of which Scenes is not one…) have no moral meaning whatsoever. They are called catastrophic because a breakdown of order - social or personal - is always the starting point, and the protagonist must invent himself out of the ruins of a life. Often this journey leads to a bitter solitude. But so what? Theatre isn't a massage. We ask it to take us seriously.

Your work is perhaps more successful in Europe than at home. Why do you think that is?
My work is vastly more successful in Europe, America or Australia than it is here. The reason is simple enough - the English (I cannot speak of the Scots) are moralistic, and have made moralising their discipline since the reformation. They like to be told what to think, and their literary heroes are moralists. Shakespeare was the last English writer who was not a moralist - and I state this knowing it to be a controversial attitude - there is a profound quarrel in Shakespeare's psyche between his pre-reformation personality and the post-reformation sense of order and kindness, as it is viewed civilly. This civil kindness is in my opinion, a false note in his work, a compromise and essentially, a deceit. But leaving all this aside, the Europeans are not burdened with this predisposition to judge - they understand art is also speculative…I am a speculative artist, I ask what might be, I don't narrate what is…

And how do you feel about this?
It is painful to be to a large extent, an internal exile. But there are compensations. The success of my work abroad has made me an international writer, and I have a small and dedicated company, The Wrestling School, with whom I develop my theatre practice. We have a distinct style, we live on the margins, but it is the margins where the most interesting things happen, obviously. There is a law of aesthetics that prevents interesting things occurring at the centre, it stands to reason.

Do you have very strong political views? Can you explain what they are and how they inform your work?
I have plenty of political views and plenty of social and personal prejudices. I do not however, value them. The great beauty of art is its ability to break down the views of the artist. Why should we believe a dramatist? What is his opinion worth? No more than anyone else's. What we do trust is the power of his imagination, which has its own truths. What is the most exquisite experience in theatre is to see the art being seduced from itself…a sort of loss of control, where a character's autonomy erupts and declares its freedom from the will of his creator. When I write, I am not giving a lecture, I am speculating on behaviour. 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.

And you are known for having very strong views on art and culture. Can you explain these?
I don't know that my views on culture are so strong - I have a powerful sense of what it is to be a European, its breadth of ideas, its obsession with the human form, and I place myself firmly in its traditions as well as being conscious of the necessity to overturn them and interrogate them. It is extraordinary to me how such diverse passions originate in the same culture - take Bosch and Rembrandt, or in literature Celine and Thomas Mann. But this sort of contradiction I find in myself, and I don't try to solve it.

You are famous for your quote about sending all your plays to the National Theatre for rejection. Can you expand a little on why you said that?
I was trying to prove a thesis, and the National Theatre obliged me. Listen, a National Theatre is an ideological construct, it is not a benign provider of facilities to serious artists. Hall, Eyre, Nunn, Hytner, all knew of my work and its reputation, internationally as well as locally. Yet they have all resolutely declined to stage it. One might argue this neglect runs counter to their remit, which is to offer the best work in the English language. But that's never the issue. They are there to cultivate the national ideology, which might have been at one time, patriotic royalism, but is now liberal humanism. Still, it is an ideological function. Quality is not the first consideration, the first consideration is whether the text is compatible with the prejudices of the age, as interpreted by these carefully chosen individuals. It's not so far from the model of Soviet communism. You have a police force, but it's done at the level of the appointments. Let me say however, I shouldn't have declined the opportunity of this place staging my work because I write big plays and they have big theatres. At the same time I think there should not be a national theatre, the huge resources wasted here should be bestowed on a dozen vigorous independent companies.

© John Good Holbrook

The Wrestling School is an Arts Council of England Project Funded company and a member of ITC.  Overseas tours are supported by The British Council.