David Edgar (playwright)
Encyclopedia
David Edgar is a British playwright
and author
who has had more than sixty of his plays published and performed on stage
, radio
and television
around the world, making him one of the most prolific dramatists of the post-1960s generation in Great Britain
.
He was resident playwright at the Birmingham
Repertory Theatre
in 1974-5 and has been a board member with them since 1985. Awarded a Fellow in Creative Writing at Leeds Polytechnic
, he was made a Bicentennial Arts Fellow (US) (1978-9).
Edgar has enjoyed a long-term association with the Royal Shakespeare Company
since 1976, beginning with his play Destiny; he was the company's literary consultant (1984–88), and became an honorary associate artist of the company in 1989. His plays have been directed by former artistic directors of both of the largest British subsidised companies, Trevor Nunn
for the RSC and Peter Hall for the National Theatre
.
His works have been performed in Ireland
, throughout western and eastern Europe, America
and as far afield as Australia
, New Zealand
, Canada
and Japan
. He is also the author of The Second Time as Farce: Reflections on the Drama of Mean Times (1988) and editor of The State of Play (2000), a book by playwrights on the art of play writing. He had his first operatic libretto The Bridge, performed as part of the Covent Garden
Festival in 1998. He is president of the Writers Guild of Great Britain, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
He founded the University of Birmingham
's MA in Playwriting Studies programme in 1989 and was its director until 1999. He was appointed Professor of Playwriting Studies in 1995.
, England
into the fourth generation of a theatrical family. His maternal grandmother was the character actress Isabel Thornton who had made films in the 1930s, including Laugh with Me (1938); his maternal aunt Nancy Burman ran the Birmingham Repertory Theatre
throughout the 1960s and '70s, and his mother Joan (née
Burman) was an actress and radio announcer whose voice became familiar to millions during World War II
. His father, Barrie Edgar (born 1919), was an actor and stage manager at the Birmingham Rep before joining the BBC
in 1946, soon working as a television producer, whose credits included Come Dancing
and Songs of Praise
. Barrie Edgar's father, and David Edgar's grandfather, was the early broadcaster Percy Edgar
who had been the founding manager of 5IT
- the first BBC radio station to open outside London - and the first regional Director of the BBC Midland Region
.
It was inevitable then, that young Edgar and his sister Kate, now a musical director, would be immersed in theatre from an early age. Being brought up in what he later recalled as a "more or less upper-middle-class family" with both parents, three grandparents, and "various other slightly more distant relatives" all involved in the theatre or broadcasting, Edgar remembers having seen most of the Shakespeare
canon by the age of fifteen, either in his native Birmingham or in nearby Stratford-upon-Avon
, plus the complete Agatha Christie
and many more of "the sort of plays one would never go to now."
His father converted a garden shed into a twelve-seat theatre for him in their garden and the young Edgar began to write plays for "the theatre in the shed" from the age of five with the intention of giving himself the starring role. By the age of nine he had written his first full-scale work, The Life and Times of William Shakespeare. "At this stage", Edgar recalled, "the idea of being a playwright who would write large parts for other people had not entered my consciousness." He really wanted to be an actor, "I wrote the 'Life and Times' for the sole purpose of playing Shakespeare's lead actor Richard Burbage
." But after some tactful advice from his mother regarding his acting ability he decided that acting was not for him and turned his hand to writing more seriously.
At Oundle School
in Northamptonshire, Edgar became immersed in theatre and was the first pupil in over 300 years of school history to be permitted to direct a play. Undeterred by his actors all being male, he chose Bertolt Brecht
's Mother Courage
, a play calling for six female roles and, forgetting his mother's advice, cast himself in the lead role as the woman who hopes to profit from war by running a canteen for soldiers, but loses all three of her children to the war from which she had hoped to profit. After leaving school in 1966, Edgar taught for one term at a preparatory school
and then went to Manchester University
to read drama with a view to becoming a playwright.
In addition to chairing the Socialist Society at Manchester University, Edgar edited the student newspaper, and found himself unable to heed his mother's advice. In 1967, the National Student Drama Festival
was held in Bradford and was won by Edinburgh University's production of Harold Pinter
's The Homecoming
(1965). Peter Farrago, director of the winning play put together a cast from talent at the Festival to perform Mike Alfreds' Mandrake, The Musical at the next Edinburgh Festival. That cast included Ian Charleson
and David Rintoul
, both of Edinburgh University, Tim Piggott-Smith from Bristol University and David Edgar played the Apothecary. On graduating in 1969 he became a journalist with The Bradford Telegraph and Argus for a short time before becoming a full-time writer in 1972. He maintains his journalism with regular contributions to newspapers and journals such as The Guardian
and The London Review of Books.
developed alongside his attempts to write plays. In 1970, soon after moving to Bradford to take up his role with the Argus, he met Chris Parr
, a Fellow in Theatre at Bradford University, who was able to commission aspiring playwrights and produce their works with the Bradford University Theatre Group, the company consisting of university students. While writing for his newspaper to expose a minor scandal in local politics in northern England, Edgar wrote a play for Parr dealing with the anti-apartheid campaign directed against a tour of South African rugby players. Before the play was accepted, however, the tour was called off.
On the strength of this, Parr commissioned Edgar to write a play for two student actresses to perform at the Edinburgh Festival
. The result was Two Kinds of Angel, a one-act play that received its Bradford premiere in July 1970, was revived at the Basement Theatre in London
and led to more commissions from Parr for the Bradford Theatre Group. Two Kinds of Angel is set in a flat where the squabbles of the two main characters are inter cut with flashbacks to the lives of their respective alter egos. Rosa is a student revolutionary who re-enacts episodes from the life of Rosa Luxemburg
, while her flatmate Norma is a blond actress re-enacting the life of Marilyn Monroe
. Edgar later described it as a "highly melodramatic piece" that relied on a series of "fairly obvious effects culled from watching the wrong sorts of plays at an impressionable age." "It wasn't very good", Edgar admits. He re-used the character of Rosa Luxemburg in his first full-length work, Bloody Rosa, produced by students of Manchester University at the Edinburgh Festival in August 1971. The play is set ostensibly in a university lecture theatre with a professor telling the story of Luxemburg's political journey, culminating with her violent death at the hand of the fascists in 1919. Edgar added the dramatic twist that events were being regularly interrupted by the students to question the professor's version of events.
Further material followed in quick succession and by the end of 1971 Edgar had seen eight of his plays performed, including A Truer Shade of Blue (1970), a one-act play in which two businessmen visit a Soho
strip club where they encounter a stripper/waitress whose story changes their perception of such entertainment; Still Life: Man in Bed (1971), produced at the Pool Theatre, Edinburgh, and again at the Little Theatre, London in 1972 is a one-act re-working of the theme of Ivan Goncharov
's novel Oblomov
(1859), in which the hero remains in bed for 79 days unable to cope with the decimalisation of currency; Acid (1971) for Parr's Bradford University Theatre Group then again at the Edinburgh Festival in 1971 is a one-act play that has a copycat of the Charles Manson
massacre take place after a 1970 pop festival on the Isle of Wight; Tedderella (1971) at the Pool Theatre, Edinburgh then again at the Bush Theatre London in 1973 is a one act pantomime transposing political events in the life of British Prime Minister Ted Heath
into a pantomime reminiscent of Cinderella
. The ugly sisters, Harold Wilson
and Roy Jenkins
, won't let "Tedderella" (Heath) go to the Common Market Ball when the 1970 general election intervenes.
During this period, Edgar continued to work as a full-time journalist and even found time to do some acting with Parr's group in parts such as the title role in Toad of Toad Hall and Flashman
in Richard Crane's adaptation of Tom Brown's Schooldays (1971). Edgar's acting also ran to playing God in Howard Brenton
's Scott of the Antarctic (1971), a mock "cabaret on ice" in which Scott is confronted by the Devil on a motorbike with Hell's Angels trying to stop his expedition to the South Pole
. This was staged as part of a series of events produced by Parr for which Edgar's main contribution was The End, presented as a Cold War Game in the great hall at Birmingham University in March 1972. On the stage, scenes in a nuclear submarine
were being played out whilst in the hall itself Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
marchers and various political figures including John F. Kennedy
, Hugh Gaitskell
and Bertrand Russel, are spending the night in a school hall during their march to Aldermaston
. Meanwhile, computer monitors permitted the audience to contribute to the action and the ending varied each evening according to the decisions made by the spectators.
During the early 1970s, Bradford had what The Guardian called a "burgeoning fringe scene" which included theatre companies with names like the John Bull Puncture Repair Kit and The Welfare State. Edgar was co-founder of such a group that took the name The General Will Theatre Company which specialised in a "crude and cartoonish" style of political commentary presented with generous dollops of music hall and burlesque for comedic effect. General Will took several of Edgar's works on tour including The National Interest (1971), a series of sketches showing how the mythical concept of 'The National Interest' can be used to justify sacrifices by the many on behalf of the self-interested few; The Rupert Show (1971) a one-act play set in a church during a service conducted by among others a vicar who also plays Superman
, Lord Longford and Judge Argyle
, the judge in the Oz obscenity trial, which the title mocks, and State of Emergency (1972), which toured with General Will and also appeared at the Edinburgh Festival and at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, all in 1972, was a one-act documentary with songs about industrial resistance to the Conservative government. General Will came to a halt when the only gay member of the company took exception to the heterosexual slant of the material and went on strike in mid-performance. They did, however, lead to Edgar's first foreign premiere.
Shortly after the Bloody Sunday
shootings in 1972, Edgar collaborated with six friends (Tony Bicat, Brian Clark, Howard Brenton
, Francis Fuchs, David Hare
and Snoo Wilson
) who pretended to be on a walking holiday and booked an isolated country cottage for a week where they sat down and wrote a play together. They took what later came to be termed the 'Firing Squad' approach to play writing. In a firing squad one member of the party has a blank round, and since no member knows who this is none of them need assume responsibility for the killing. Edgar and his friends tried to write in a style as similar to the others as possible so none of them need take responsibility for his contribution to the play. The result was England's Ireland (1972), an episodic look at the history of the British in Northern Ireland
with different episodes shown from different perspectives. This received its world premiere at the hands of the Shoot Theatre Company at the Mickery Theatre, Amsterdam
in 1972 and later the same year transferred to the Round House Theatre in London.
By now, Edgar was receiving commissions from repertory theatres and small touring groups resulting in Excuses Excuses (1972) for the Belgrade Theatre Studio, Coventry
and later revived by OpenSpace Theatre, London in 1973 and then revived as Fired (1975) by Second City Theatre Company was a debate on the motives for arson committed in protest at redundancies at a local factory; Rent or Caught in the Act (1972), at the Unity Theatre, London was about housing conditions for the working classes; Road to Hanoi (1972) produced on tour by Paradise Foundry Theatre Company, London, was a ten-minute play written with Howard, Wandor and Snoo Wilson about Bob Hope
's 1971 visit to Hanoi
to attempt to buy back American POWs; In 1972 Edgar decided to put the journalism to one side and took to being a playwright full time.
was scheduled for a dozen plays but proved so popular they eventually had over a hundred. In London in the 1970s it had something of a renaissance at The Orange Tree
, at the Croydon Warehouse where it proved so popular they didn't bother putting on evening performances for a while, and London's Gay Sweatshop started as a gays-only lunchtime theatre club called Ambience. The Soho Polytechnic was another lunchtime theatre venue where Edgar put on a number of necessarily short plays written for office workers on their lunchbreak but which proved remarkably popular with television producers.
Backshot (1973), written for the Soho Polytechnic was a one-act play in which two small-time crooks are cheated of their loot whilst trying to rob broken vending machines in a motorway cafeteria. This was televised as Sanctuary by Scottish Television in 1973. Baby Love (1973) was written for Leeds Playhouse Theatre where it premiered in March 1973 then transferred to the Soho Polytechnic Lunchtime Theatre. It was a one-act play in which Eileen, after the still birth of her illegitimate baby, steals a baby at random and is sentenced to nine months in prison, where Valium is found to be the answer. This was televised by the BBC
as part of their Play for Today series in November 1974, with Patti Love as Eileen.
Whilst working as a journalist in Bradford, Edgar came across a group led by an ex-conservative councillor that called itself the Yorkshire Campaign to Stop Immigration. This group apparently, "addressed many real needs and some real fears" by
holding meetings at which they showed films upside down with no sound. This group later merged with the National Front
which, in 1973, won 16% of the vote at the West Bromwich
by-election, at which point Edgar decided it was time to write a play about them. Destiny (1976) was the result. Edgar had wanted it to be produced in a big repertory theatre in a multi-racial city but it was instead picked up by Ron Daniels at the Royal Shakespeare Company who produced it at The Other Place
, Stratford-upon-Avon, which Edgar described as, "a tin hut in rural Warwickshire". From there it transferred to the RSC's London home, The Aldwych Theatre, opening in May 1977 at the height of the Queen's Silver Jubilee celebrations and just after the National Front won almost 120,000 votes in London's local elections.
That summer, Britain was in the throes of the Queen's Silver Jubilee and West End theatre audience figures suffered as a consequence, with only two shows managing to hold their own during Jubilee week, both of which were at the Aldwych. One of them was about a mad king provoking a Civil War by dividing his kingdom between his daughters, and the other was Edgar's lightly veiled suggestion that Britain was exposed to a fascist takeover. The play was picketed by a group of neo-fascists waving union flags that echoed the patriotic bunting on the front of the theatre, and small scuffles broke out between these pickets and the emerging theatre audience.
The play itself was an attempt to answer the question: How can a movement espousing the ideology that the UK had defied during the war gain purchase in postwar Britain? Destiny starts in India, on the day of independence, introducing four main characters whose lives intercept thirty years later in a small town in the English West Midlands. A British Colonel is a dying Conservative MP; a Major who is hoping to succeed him; a Sergeant who is a candidate for a far-right party and an Indian who works in a local foundry. During the election campaign a strike breaks out at the foundry and the "cosy English ritual" of a local by-election is transformed into a multi-cultural battleground which results in the fascists turning for protection and support to the forces they oppose.
Edgar's comparison of British fascists with German Nazis was condemned as "dishonest" by Peter Jenkins
in The Guardian, but the play won the John Whiting Award
, presented by the Arts Council
for new dramatic writing and was televised by the BBC
as part of the Play for Today series in January 1978 with Frederick Treves
as the Colonel and Nigel Hawthorne
as the Major.
for the Royal Shakespeare Company
, an adaptation of Charles Dickens
's novel Nicholas Nickleby, he resumed writing original plays which deal more overtly with political subjects. After the abandonment of the left by a number of public figures during the 1970s, Maydays (1983) deals with people's drift rightwards as they age.
Edgar wrote a trilogy of plays on the theme of negotiation set in Eastern Europe
: The Shape of the Table
(1990), written shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union; the second part, Pentecost, set during the early 1990s, concerning the discovery of a mural
in a small church; and The Prisoner's Dilemma
(2001), which premiered shortly before September 11.
His other recent plays include Albert Speer
(2000) and Playing with Fire (2005), both of which premiered at the Royal National Theatre
, in London. Albert Speer, based on Gitta Sereny
's biography of Adolf Hitler
's chief architect, munitions minister, and friend Albert Speer
, and other historical biographies and documents, focuses on Speer's imprisonment, release, and personal struggle to overcome his denial of the Holocaust. Playing with Fire, a play about the politics of New Labour, multiculturalism, and ethnic tensions in the north of England, has been produced both on stage and in an adaptation for radio. was concerned with a diverse set of characters preparing to become British citizens.
In 2003 Edgar was commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
, in Ashland, Oregon
, and the Berkeley Repertory Theatre
, in Berkeley, California
, to write Continental Divide, a two-play epic about American politics
, which was produced at both theatres to mixed reviews. In 2011 he produced Written on the Heart
for the Royal Shakespeare Company
, on the translation of the King James Bible.
He will also be partaking in the Bush Theatre
's 2011 project Sixty Six where he has written a piece based upon a chapter of the King James Bible
aged 53 in 1998. In 1999, he met fellow dramatist Stephanie Dale. In 2007 they wrote together A Time to Keep
, a play for large cast based on a story by Dale.
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
and author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
who has had more than sixty of his plays published and performed on stage
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
, radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
and television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
around the world, making him one of the most prolific dramatists of the post-1960s generation in Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
.
He was resident playwright at the Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
Repertory Theatre
Repertory
Repertory or rep, also called stock in the United States, is a term used in Western theatre and opera.A repertory theatre can be a theatre in which a resident company presents works from a specified repertoire, usually in alternation or rotation...
in 1974-5 and has been a board member with them since 1985. Awarded a Fellow in Creative Writing at Leeds Polytechnic
Leeds Metropolitan University
Leeds Metropolitan University is a British University with three campuses. Two are situated in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England while the third is situated in Bhopal, India...
, he was made a Bicentennial Arts Fellow (US) (1978-9).
Edgar has enjoyed a long-term association with the Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
since 1976, beginning with his play Destiny; he was the company's literary consultant (1984–88), and became an honorary associate artist of the company in 1989. His plays have been directed by former artistic directors of both of the largest British subsidised companies, Trevor Nunn
Trevor Nunn
Sir Trevor Robert Nunn, CBE is an English theatre, film and television director. Nunn has been the Artistic Director for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre, and, currently, the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. He has directed musicals and dramas for the stage, as well as opera...
for the RSC and Peter Hall for the National Theatre
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...
.
His works have been performed in Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
, throughout western and eastern Europe, America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and as far afield as Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. He is also the author of The Second Time as Farce: Reflections on the Drama of Mean Times (1988) and editor of The State of Play (2000), a book by playwrights on the art of play writing. He had his first operatic libretto The Bridge, performed as part of the Covent Garden
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
Festival in 1998. He is president of the Writers Guild of Great Britain, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
He founded the University of Birmingham
University of Birmingham
The University of Birmingham is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Birmingham Medical School and Mason Science College . Birmingham was the first Redbrick university to gain a charter and thus...
's MA in Playwriting Studies programme in 1989 and was its director until 1999. He was appointed Professor of Playwriting Studies in 1995.
Early life
Edgar was born in BirminghamBirmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
into the fourth generation of a theatrical family. His maternal grandmother was the character actress Isabel Thornton who had made films in the 1930s, including Laugh with Me (1938); his maternal aunt Nancy Burman ran the Birmingham Repertory Theatre
Birmingham Repertory Theatre
Birmingham Repertory Theatre is a theatre and theatre company based on Centenary Square in Birmingham, England...
throughout the 1960s and '70s, and his mother Joan (née
Married and maiden names
A married name is the family name adopted by a person upon marriage. When a person assumes the family name of her spouse, the new name replaces the maiden name....
Burman) was an actress and radio announcer whose voice became familiar to millions during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. His father, Barrie Edgar (born 1919), was an actor and stage manager at the Birmingham Rep before joining the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
in 1946, soon working as a television producer, whose credits included Come Dancing
Come Dancing
Come Dancing was a BBC TV ballroom dancing competition show that ran on and off from 1949 to 1998, becoming one of television's longest-running shows....
and Songs of Praise
Songs of Praise
Songs of Praise is a BBC Television programme based around traditional Christian hymns. It is a widely watched and long-running religious television programme, one of the few peak-time free-to-air religious programmes in Europe Songs of Praise is a BBC Television programme based around traditional...
. Barrie Edgar's father, and David Edgar's grandfather, was the early broadcaster Percy Edgar
Percy Edgar
Frederick Percy Edgar OBE was an English broadcaster.Edgar was the dominant figure in English regional broadcasting from its birth until World War II. In 1922 he was the founding General Manager and opening announcer for the first BBC station outside London - Birmingham's 5IT...
who had been the founding manager of 5IT
5IT
5IT was a BBC radio station which broadcast from Birmingham, England, between 1922 and 1927. It was the BBC's second station, going live at 17.20 on 15 November 1922, the day after 2LO started daily BBC broadcasting from London and one hour forty minutes before 2ZY launched BBC broadcasting in...
- the first BBC radio station to open outside London - and the first regional Director of the BBC Midland Region
BBC West Midlands
BBC West Midlands is the BBC English Region producing local television, radio, web and teletext content for West Midlands metropolitan county, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire and parts of Northern Gloucestershire - although the county as part of the south west...
.
It was inevitable then, that young Edgar and his sister Kate, now a musical director, would be immersed in theatre from an early age. Being brought up in what he later recalled as a "more or less upper-middle-class family" with both parents, three grandparents, and "various other slightly more distant relatives" all involved in the theatre or broadcasting, Edgar remembers having seen most of the Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
canon by the age of fifteen, either in his native Birmingham or in nearby Stratford-upon-Avon
Stratford-upon-Avon
Stratford-upon-Avon is a market town and civil parish in south Warwickshire, England. It lies on the River Avon, south east of Birmingham and south west of Warwick. It is the largest and most populous town of the District of Stratford-on-Avon, which uses the term "on" to indicate that it covers...
, plus the complete Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
and many more of "the sort of plays one would never go to now."
His father converted a garden shed into a twelve-seat theatre for him in their garden and the young Edgar began to write plays for "the theatre in the shed" from the age of five with the intention of giving himself the starring role. By the age of nine he had written his first full-scale work, The Life and Times of William Shakespeare. "At this stage", Edgar recalled, "the idea of being a playwright who would write large parts for other people had not entered my consciousness." He really wanted to be an actor, "I wrote the 'Life and Times' for the sole purpose of playing Shakespeare's lead actor Richard Burbage
Richard Burbage
Richard Burbage was an English actor and theatre owner. He was the younger brother of Cuthbert Burbage. They were both actors in drama....
." But after some tactful advice from his mother regarding his acting ability he decided that acting was not for him and turned his hand to writing more seriously.
At Oundle School
Oundle School
Oundle School is a co-educational British public school located in the ancient market town of Oundle in Northamptonshire. The school has been maintained by the Worshipful Company of Grocers of the City of London since its foundation in 1556. Oundle has eight boys' houses, five girls' houses, a day...
in Northamptonshire, Edgar became immersed in theatre and was the first pupil in over 300 years of school history to be permitted to direct a play. Undeterred by his actors all being male, he chose Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
's Mother Courage
Mother Courage and Her Children
Mother Courage and Her Children is a play written in 1939 by the German dramatist and poet Bertolt Brecht with significant contributions from Margarete Steffin...
, a play calling for six female roles and, forgetting his mother's advice, cast himself in the lead role as the woman who hopes to profit from war by running a canteen for soldiers, but loses all three of her children to the war from which she had hoped to profit. After leaving school in 1966, Edgar taught for one term at a preparatory school
Preparatory school
Preparatory school or prep school may refer to:*University-preparatory school, a school in North America that is a private secondary school, typically charging high fees, designed to prepare students aged 14–18 for higher education at a university or college*Preparatory school , an independent...
and then went to Manchester University
University of Manchester
The University of Manchester is a public research university located in Manchester, United Kingdom. It is a "red brick" university and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive British universities and the N8 Group...
to read drama with a view to becoming a playwright.
In addition to chairing the Socialist Society at Manchester University, Edgar edited the student newspaper, and found himself unable to heed his mother's advice. In 1967, the National Student Drama Festival
National Student Drama Festival
The National Student Drama Festival was founded in 1956 by the Sunday Times arts columnist - the festival's first artistic director - Kenneth Pearson, the Sunday Times theatre critic Harold Hobson, and NUS president Frank Copplestone. The Sunday Times Editor, H.V...
was held in Bradford and was won by Edinburgh University's production of Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
's The Homecoming
The Homecoming
The Homecoming is a two-act play written in 1964 by Nobel laureate Harold Pinter and first published in 1965. The original Broadway production won the 1967 Tony Award for Best Play and its 40th-anniversary Broadway production at the Cort Theatre was nominated for a 2008 Tony Award for "Best Revival...
(1965). Peter Farrago, director of the winning play put together a cast from talent at the Festival to perform Mike Alfreds' Mandrake, The Musical at the next Edinburgh Festival. That cast included Ian Charleson
Ian Charleson
Ian Charleson was a Scottish stage and film actor. He is best known internationally for his starring role as Olympic athlete and missionary Eric Liddell, in the Oscar-winning 1981 film Chariots of Fire. He is also well known for his portrayal of Rev...
and David Rintoul
David Rintoul
David Rintoul is a stage and television actor.Rintoul was born in Aberdeen, Scotland. He studied at Edinburgh University and won a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London....
, both of Edinburgh University, Tim Piggott-Smith from Bristol University and David Edgar played the Apothecary. On graduating in 1969 he became a journalist with The Bradford Telegraph and Argus for a short time before becoming a full-time writer in 1972. He maintains his journalism with regular contributions to newspapers and journals such as The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
and The London Review of Books.
Early theatre pieces
Initially, Edgar's career as a journalistJournalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
developed alongside his attempts to write plays. In 1970, soon after moving to Bradford to take up his role with the Argus, he met Chris Parr
Chris Parr
Chris Parr is a British theatre director and television executive.In the late 1960s and early 1970s Parr was Fellow in Theatre at the University of Bradford. In the mid 1970s he became Artistic Director of the Traverse Theatre....
, a Fellow in Theatre at Bradford University, who was able to commission aspiring playwrights and produce their works with the Bradford University Theatre Group, the company consisting of university students. While writing for his newspaper to expose a minor scandal in local politics in northern England, Edgar wrote a play for Parr dealing with the anti-apartheid campaign directed against a tour of South African rugby players. Before the play was accepted, however, the tour was called off.
On the strength of this, Parr commissioned Edgar to write a play for two student actresses to perform at the Edinburgh Festival
Edinburgh Festival
The Edinburgh Festival is a collective term for many arts and cultural festivals that take place in Edinburgh, Scotland each summer, mostly in August...
. The result was Two Kinds of Angel, a one-act play that received its Bradford premiere in July 1970, was revived at the Basement Theatre in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and led to more commissions from Parr for the Bradford Theatre Group. Two Kinds of Angel is set in a flat where the squabbles of the two main characters are inter cut with flashbacks to the lives of their respective alter egos. Rosa is a student revolutionary who re-enacts episodes from the life of Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen...
, while her flatmate Norma is a blond actress re-enacting the life of Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
. Edgar later described it as a "highly melodramatic piece" that relied on a series of "fairly obvious effects culled from watching the wrong sorts of plays at an impressionable age." "It wasn't very good", Edgar admits. He re-used the character of Rosa Luxemburg in his first full-length work, Bloody Rosa, produced by students of Manchester University at the Edinburgh Festival in August 1971. The play is set ostensibly in a university lecture theatre with a professor telling the story of Luxemburg's political journey, culminating with her violent death at the hand of the fascists in 1919. Edgar added the dramatic twist that events were being regularly interrupted by the students to question the professor's version of events.
Further material followed in quick succession and by the end of 1971 Edgar had seen eight of his plays performed, including A Truer Shade of Blue (1970), a one-act play in which two businessmen visit a Soho
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster and part of the West End of London. Long established as an entertainment district, for much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation for sex shops as well as night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s, the area has undergone considerable...
strip club where they encounter a stripper/waitress whose story changes their perception of such entertainment; Still Life: Man in Bed (1971), produced at the Pool Theatre, Edinburgh, and again at the Little Theatre, London in 1972 is a one-act re-working of the theme of Ivan Goncharov
Ivan Goncharov
Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov was a Russian novelist best known as the author of Oblomov .- Biography :Ivan Goncharov was born in Simbirsk ; his father was a wealthy grain merchant and respected official who was elected mayor of Simbirsk several times...
's novel Oblomov
Oblomov
Oblomov is the best known novel by Russian writer Ivan Goncharov, first published in 1859. Oblomov is also the central character of the novel, often seen as the ultimate incarnation of the superfluous man, a symbolic character in 19th-century Russian literature...
(1859), in which the hero remains in bed for 79 days unable to cope with the decimalisation of currency; Acid (1971) for Parr's Bradford University Theatre Group then again at the Edinburgh Festival in 1971 is a one-act play that has a copycat of the Charles Manson
Charles Manson
Charles Milles Manson is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders carried out by members of the group at his instruction...
massacre take place after a 1970 pop festival on the Isle of Wight; Tedderella (1971) at the Pool Theatre, Edinburgh then again at the Bush Theatre London in 1973 is a one act pantomime transposing political events in the life of British Prime Minister Ted Heath
Edward Heath
Sir Edward Richard George "Ted" Heath, KG, MBE, PC was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and as Leader of the Conservative Party ....
into a pantomime reminiscent of Cinderella
Cinderella
"Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper" is a folk tale embodying a myth-element of unjust oppression/triumphant reward. Thousands of variants are known throughout the world. The title character is a young woman living in unfortunate circumstances that are suddenly changed to remarkable fortune...
. The ugly sisters, Harold Wilson
Harold Wilson
James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, FRS, FSS, PC was a British Labour Member of Parliament, Leader of the Labour Party. He was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the 1960s and 1970s, winning four general elections, including a minority government after the...
and Roy Jenkins
Roy Jenkins
Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead OM, PC was a British politician.The son of a Welsh coal miner who later became a union official and Labour MP, Roy Jenkins served with distinction in World War II. Elected to Parliament as a Labour member in 1948, he served in several major posts in...
, won't let "Tedderella" (Heath) go to the Common Market Ball when the 1970 general election intervenes.
During this period, Edgar continued to work as a full-time journalist and even found time to do some acting with Parr's group in parts such as the title role in Toad of Toad Hall and Flashman
Tom Brown's Schooldays
Tom Brown's Schooldays is a novel by Thomas Hughes. The story is set at Rugby School, a public school for boys, in the 1830s; Hughes attended Rugby School from 1834 to 1842...
in Richard Crane's adaptation of Tom Brown's Schooldays (1971). Edgar's acting also ran to playing God in Howard Brenton
Howard Brenton
-Early years:Brenton was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, son of Methodist minister Donald Henry Brenton and his wife Rose Lilian . He was educated at Chichester High School For Boys and read English Literature at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. In 1964 he was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal...
's Scott of the Antarctic (1971), a mock "cabaret on ice" in which Scott is confronted by the Devil on a motorbike with Hell's Angels trying to stop his expedition to the South Pole
South Pole
The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole or Terrestrial South Pole, is one of the two points where the Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface. It is the southernmost point on the surface of the Earth and lies on the opposite side of the Earth from the North Pole...
. This was staged as part of a series of events produced by Parr for which Edgar's main contribution was The End, presented as a Cold War Game in the great hall at Birmingham University in March 1972. On the stage, scenes in a nuclear submarine
Submarine
A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...
were being played out whilst in the hall itself Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is an anti-nuclear organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...
marchers and various political figures including John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
, Hugh Gaitskell
Hugh Gaitskell
Hugh Todd Naylor Gaitskell CBE was a British Labour politician, who held Cabinet office in Clement Attlee's governments, and was the Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition from 1955, until his death in 1963.-Early life:He was born in Kensington, London, the third and youngest...
and Bertrand Russel, are spending the night in a school hall during their march to Aldermaston
Aldermaston
Aldermaston is a rural village, civil parish and electoral ward in Berkshire, South-East England. In the 2001 United Kingdom Census, the parish had a population of 927. The village is on the southern edge of the River Kennet flood plain, near the Hampshire county boundary...
. Meanwhile, computer monitors permitted the audience to contribute to the action and the ending varied each evening according to the decisions made by the spectators.
During the early 1970s, Bradford had what The Guardian called a "burgeoning fringe scene" which included theatre companies with names like the John Bull Puncture Repair Kit and The Welfare State. Edgar was co-founder of such a group that took the name The General Will Theatre Company which specialised in a "crude and cartoonish" style of political commentary presented with generous dollops of music hall and burlesque for comedic effect. General Will took several of Edgar's works on tour including The National Interest (1971), a series of sketches showing how the mythical concept of 'The National Interest' can be used to justify sacrifices by the many on behalf of the self-interested few; The Rupert Show (1971) a one-act play set in a church during a service conducted by among others a vicar who also plays Superman
Superman
Superman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...
, Lord Longford and Judge Argyle
Michael Argyle (lawyer)
His Honour James Morton Michael Victor Argyle QC MC was a judge at the Central Criminal Court of the United Kingdom from 1970 to 1988...
, the judge in the Oz obscenity trial, which the title mocks, and State of Emergency (1972), which toured with General Will and also appeared at the Edinburgh Festival and at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, all in 1972, was a one-act documentary with songs about industrial resistance to the Conservative government. General Will came to a halt when the only gay member of the company took exception to the heterosexual slant of the material and went on strike in mid-performance. They did, however, lead to Edgar's first foreign premiere.
Shortly after the Bloody Sunday
Bloody Sunday (1972)
Bloody Sunday —sometimes called the Bogside Massacre—was an incident on 30 January 1972 in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland, in which twenty-six unarmed civil rights protesters and bystanders were shot by soldiers of the British Army...
shootings in 1972, Edgar collaborated with six friends (Tony Bicat, Brian Clark, Howard Brenton
Howard Brenton
-Early years:Brenton was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, son of Methodist minister Donald Henry Brenton and his wife Rose Lilian . He was educated at Chichester High School For Boys and read English Literature at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. In 1964 he was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal...
, Francis Fuchs, David Hare
David Hare (playwright)
Sir David Hare is an English playwright and theatre and film director.-Early life:Hare was born in St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings, East Sussex, the son of Agnes and Clifford Hare, a sailor. He was educated at Lancing, an independent school in West Sussex, and at Jesus College, Cambridge...
and Snoo Wilson
Snoo Wilson
Snoo Wilson, , born Andrew James Wilson, is an English playwright, screenwriter and director. His early plays such as Blow-Job were overtly political, often combining harsh social comment with comedy...
) who pretended to be on a walking holiday and booked an isolated country cottage for a week where they sat down and wrote a play together. They took what later came to be termed the 'Firing Squad' approach to play writing. In a firing squad one member of the party has a blank round, and since no member knows who this is none of them need assume responsibility for the killing. Edgar and his friends tried to write in a style as similar to the others as possible so none of them need take responsibility for his contribution to the play. The result was England's Ireland (1972), an episodic look at the history of the British in Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
with different episodes shown from different perspectives. This received its world premiere at the hands of the Shoot Theatre Company at the Mickery Theatre, Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
in 1972 and later the same year transferred to the Round House Theatre in London.
By now, Edgar was receiving commissions from repertory theatres and small touring groups resulting in Excuses Excuses (1972) for the Belgrade Theatre Studio, Coventry
Coventry
Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...
and later revived by OpenSpace Theatre, London in 1973 and then revived as Fired (1975) by Second City Theatre Company was a debate on the motives for arson committed in protest at redundancies at a local factory; Rent or Caught in the Act (1972), at the Unity Theatre, London was about housing conditions for the working classes; Road to Hanoi (1972) produced on tour by Paradise Foundry Theatre Company, London, was a ten-minute play written with Howard, Wandor and Snoo Wilson about Bob Hope
Bob Hope
Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS was a British-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel...
's 1971 visit to Hanoi
Hanoi
Hanoi , is the capital of Vietnam and the country's second largest city. Its population in 2009 was estimated at 2.6 million for urban districts, 6.5 million for the metropolitan jurisdiction. From 1010 until 1802, it was the most important political centre of Vietnam...
to attempt to buy back American POWs; In 1972 Edgar decided to put the journalism to one side and took to being a playwright full time.
Gaining a reputation
Lunchtime theatre is an avant-garde phenomenon that seems to exist on the fringe of the fringe and whose popularity waxes and wanes but never disappears. One series in GlasgowGlasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
was scheduled for a dozen plays but proved so popular they eventually had over a hundred. In London in the 1970s it had something of a renaissance at The Orange Tree
Orange Tree Theatre
The Orange Tree Theatre is a 172-seat theatre at 1 Clarence Street, Richmond in south west London, built specifically as a theatre in the round....
, at the Croydon Warehouse where it proved so popular they didn't bother putting on evening performances for a while, and London's Gay Sweatshop started as a gays-only lunchtime theatre club called Ambience. The Soho Polytechnic was another lunchtime theatre venue where Edgar put on a number of necessarily short plays written for office workers on their lunchbreak but which proved remarkably popular with television producers.
Backshot (1973), written for the Soho Polytechnic was a one-act play in which two small-time crooks are cheated of their loot whilst trying to rob broken vending machines in a motorway cafeteria. This was televised as Sanctuary by Scottish Television in 1973. Baby Love (1973) was written for Leeds Playhouse Theatre where it premiered in March 1973 then transferred to the Soho Polytechnic Lunchtime Theatre. It was a one-act play in which Eileen, after the still birth of her illegitimate baby, steals a baby at random and is sentenced to nine months in prison, where Valium is found to be the answer. This was televised by the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
as part of their Play for Today series in November 1974, with Patti Love as Eileen.
Whilst working as a journalist in Bradford, Edgar came across a group led by an ex-conservative councillor that called itself the Yorkshire Campaign to Stop Immigration. This group apparently, "addressed many real needs and some real fears" by
holding meetings at which they showed films upside down with no sound. This group later merged with the National Front
British National Front
The National Front is a far right, white-only political party whose major political activities took place during the 1970s and 1980s. Its popularity peaked in the 1979 general election, when it received 191,719 votes ....
which, in 1973, won 16% of the vote at the West Bromwich
West Bromwich
West Bromwich is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell, in the West Midlands, England. It is north west of Birmingham lying on the A41 London-to-Birkenhead road. West Bromwich is part of the Black Country...
by-election, at which point Edgar decided it was time to write a play about them. Destiny (1976) was the result. Edgar had wanted it to be produced in a big repertory theatre in a multi-racial city but it was instead picked up by Ron Daniels at the Royal Shakespeare Company who produced it at The Other Place
The Other Place (theatre)
The Other Place was a black box theatre on Southern Lane, near to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. It was owned and operated by the Royal Shakespeare Company....
, Stratford-upon-Avon, which Edgar described as, "a tin hut in rural Warwickshire". From there it transferred to the RSC's London home, The Aldwych Theatre, opening in May 1977 at the height of the Queen's Silver Jubilee celebrations and just after the National Front won almost 120,000 votes in London's local elections.
That summer, Britain was in the throes of the Queen's Silver Jubilee and West End theatre audience figures suffered as a consequence, with only two shows managing to hold their own during Jubilee week, both of which were at the Aldwych. One of them was about a mad king provoking a Civil War by dividing his kingdom between his daughters, and the other was Edgar's lightly veiled suggestion that Britain was exposed to a fascist takeover. The play was picketed by a group of neo-fascists waving union flags that echoed the patriotic bunting on the front of the theatre, and small scuffles broke out between these pickets and the emerging theatre audience.
The play itself was an attempt to answer the question: How can a movement espousing the ideology that the UK had defied during the war gain purchase in postwar Britain? Destiny starts in India, on the day of independence, introducing four main characters whose lives intercept thirty years later in a small town in the English West Midlands. A British Colonel is a dying Conservative MP; a Major who is hoping to succeed him; a Sergeant who is a candidate for a far-right party and an Indian who works in a local foundry. During the election campaign a strike breaks out at the foundry and the "cosy English ritual" of a local by-election is transformed into a multi-cultural battleground which results in the fascists turning for protection and support to the forces they oppose.
Edgar's comparison of British fascists with German Nazis was condemned as "dishonest" by Peter Jenkins
Peter Jenkins (journalist)
Peter George James Jenkins was a British journalist and Associate Editor of The Independent. During his career he wrote regular columns for The Guardian, The Sunday Times as well as the The Independent....
in The Guardian, but the play won the John Whiting Award
John Whiting Award
The John Whiting Award is awarded annually to a British or Commonwealth playwright who, in the opinion of a consortium of UK theatres, shows a new and distinctive development in dramatic writing with particular relevance to contemporary society...
, presented by the Arts Council
Arts Council England
Arts Council England was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council of Great Britain was divided into three separate bodies for England, Scotland and Wales. It is a non-departmental public body of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport...
for new dramatic writing and was televised by the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
as part of the Play for Today series in January 1978 with Frederick Treves
Frederick Treves (actor)
Frederick William Treves BEM, is an English character actor with an extensive repertoire, specialising in avuncular military and titled types....
as the Colonel and Nigel Hawthorne
Nigel Hawthorne
Sir Nigel Barnard Hawthorne, CBE was an English actor, perhaps best remembered for his role as Sir Humphrey Appleby, the Permanent Secretary in the 1980s sitcom Yes Minister and the Cabinet Secretary in its sequel, Yes, Prime Minister. For this role he won four BAFTA Awards during the 1980s in the...
as the Major.
Nickleby and after
After his greatest success in 1980 with The Life and Adventures of Nicholas NicklebyThe Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (play)
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby is an eight-hour stage play, presented over two performances, adapted from the Charles Dickens novel of the same name by David Edgar. Directed by John Caird and Trevor Nunn, it opened on 5 June 1980 at the Aldwych Theatre in London. The music and lyrics...
for the Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
, an adaptation of Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
's novel Nicholas Nickleby, he resumed writing original plays which deal more overtly with political subjects. After the abandonment of the left by a number of public figures during the 1970s, Maydays (1983) deals with people's drift rightwards as they age.
Edgar wrote a trilogy of plays on the theme of negotiation set in Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
: The Shape of the Table
The Shape of the Table
The Shape of the Table is a theatrical drama written by David Edgar. It was first staged at the National Theatre, London, UK on 8 November 1990 - the first anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall - in a production directed by Jenny Killick....
(1990), written shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union; the second part, Pentecost, set during the early 1990s, concerning the discovery of a mural
Mural
A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A particularly distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.-History:Murals of...
in a small church; and The Prisoner's Dilemma
The Prisoner's Dilemma (play)
The Prisoner's Dilemma is a theatrical drama written by David Edgar. It was premiered in The Other Place Theatre by the Royal Shakespeare Company in July 2001.Cast for the premiere included: Trevor Cooper ,Larry Lamb,Joseph Mydell,...
(2001), which premiered shortly before September 11.
His other recent plays include Albert Speer
Albert Speer (play)
Albert Speer was a 2000 play by the British playwright David Edgar on the life of the Nazi-era architect Albert Speer, based on based on the book Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth by Gitta Sereny. It premiered that year at the Lyttelton auditorium of the Royal National Theatre, with the title...
(2000) and Playing with Fire (2005), both of which premiered at the Royal National Theatre
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...
, in London. Albert Speer, based on Gitta Sereny
Gitta Sereny
Gitta Sereny is an Austrian-born biographer, historian and investigative journalist whose writing focuses mainly on the Holocaust and child abuse. She is the stepdaughter of the economist Ludwig von Mises....
's biography of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
's chief architect, munitions minister, and friend Albert Speer
Albert Speer
Albert Speer, born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, was a German architect who was, for a part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office...
, and other historical biographies and documents, focuses on Speer's imprisonment, release, and personal struggle to overcome his denial of the Holocaust. Playing with Fire, a play about the politics of New Labour, multiculturalism, and ethnic tensions in the north of England, has been produced both on stage and in an adaptation for radio. was concerned with a diverse set of characters preparing to become British citizens.
In 2003 Edgar was commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
Oregon Shakespeare Festival
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is a regional repertory theatre in Ashland, Oregon, United States. The festival annually produces eleven plays on three stages during a season that lasts from February to October...
, in Ashland, Oregon
Ashland, Oregon
Ashland is a city in Jackson County, Oregon, United States, near Interstate 5 and the California border, and located in the south end of the Rogue Valley. It was named after Ashland County, Ohio, point of origin of Abel Helman and other founders, and secondarily for Ashland, Kentucky, where other...
, and the Berkeley Repertory Theatre
Berkeley Repertory Theatre
Berkeley Repertory Theatre is a regional theater company located in Berkeley, California. It was founded in 1968, as the East Bay’s first resident professional theatre. Michael Leibert was the founding artistic director, who was then succeeded by Sharon Ott in 1984. The company runs seven...
, in Berkeley, California
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
, to write Continental Divide, a two-play epic about American politics
American politics
American politics is an area of study within the academic discipline of political science. It is primarily, but not exclusively, studied by researchers in the United States...
, which was produced at both theatres to mixed reviews. In 2011 he produced Written on the Heart
Written on the Heart
Written on the Heart is a 2011 play by the British playwright David Edgar. It is to be premiered by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre from 27 October 2011 to 10 March 2012, to mark the four-hundredth anniversary of the King James Bible - it draws its title from the translation of...
for the Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
, on the translation of the King James Bible.
He will also be partaking in the Bush Theatre
Bush Theatre
The Bush Theatre is based in Shepherd's Bush, in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. It was established in 1972 above The Bush public house by Brian McDermott, and has since become one of the most celebrated new writing theatres in the world. An intimate venue renowned for its close-up...
's 2011 project Sixty Six where he has written a piece based upon a chapter of the King James Bible
Marriages
Edgar married the social activist Eve Brook in 1979; she died of lung cancerLung cancer
Lung cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. If left untreated, this growth can spread beyond the lung in a process called metastasis into nearby tissue and, eventually, into other parts of the body. Most cancers that start in lung, known as primary...
aged 53 in 1998. In 1999, he met fellow dramatist Stephanie Dale. In 2007 they wrote together A Time to Keep
A Time to Keep
A Time to Keep is a play written by David Edgar and Stephanie Dale.It is the fifth play to be specifically written for community actors in Dorchester, with the aim of providing a rollicking story with many roles. The "community play" contains over 100 characters, from George III and his court to...
, a play for large cast based on a story by Dale.
External links
- British Council Contemporary Writers entry
- View a segment on David Edgar and "Continental Divide" at KQED's Spark
- British Theatre Guide