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126-507: Tony Bicât and David Hare formed Portable Theatre in 1968, a year that saw widespread political unrest in Britain (and internationally) and where a youth orientated ‘counter culture’ flourished and was seen to challenge the existing order. The Drury Lane Arts Lab , set up by Jim Haynes the previous year, was an important venue for newly founded ‘alternative’ or ‘underground’ theatre companies. Haynes offered free rehearsal space for companies on

252-588: A "systematic misunderstanding of situationist theses"; the understanding that at least one Gruppe SPUR member, sculptor Lothar Fischer , and possibly the rest of the group, were not actually understanding and/or agreeing with the situationist ideas, but were just using the SI to achieve success in the art market ; and the betrayal, in the Spur #7 issue, of a common agreement on the Gruppe SPUR and SI publications. The exclusion

378-505: A battery pig farm inhabited by the ghosts of its former tenants, and are visited, with fatal consequences, by a German prisoner of war/farm worker who has escaped from a local asylum’. In 1971, Portable were awarded an £8000 subsidy from the Arts Council. Although ‘they could now afford to pay themselves to run the company’ neither Bicât nor Hare wanted that job and rather than giving the money back they appointed Malcolm Griffiths to become

504-410: A document which essentially serves as an instruction manual for the psychogeographic procedure, executed through the act of dérive ("drift"). In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there... But

630-465: A general production capacity for their second season. Jean Genet ’s The Maids was presented in drag on a double bill with Purity – a study in censorship by David Mowat . A new work commissioned from Howard Brenton was to join it on tour in the autumn. Brenton was a friend from Cambridge and had been a resident writer with the Brighton Combination in 1968 and now had a new play opening at

756-578: A general strike was declared with up to 10 million workers participating. The SI originally participated in the Sorbonne occupations and defended barricades in the riots. The SI distributed calls for the occupation of factories and the formation of workers' councils , but, disillusioned with the students, left the university to set up The Council for the Maintenance of the Occupations (CMDO) which distributed

882-488: A hallmark of Portable. Snoo Wilson was credited with the design – a pit of screwed up newspapers. Christie in Love ’s popularity led to two revivals in 1970 and significantly clarified for Hare and Bicât the direction the company should take: ‘from now on, there was no question of Portable doing old plays’ Whilst Hare’s claim about not doing old plays isn’t entirely accurate - there was a Snoo Wilson adaption of Pericles (Pericles,

1008-434: A kind of resilient drama you could throw on in a church hall. And they became more direct. The best of them is Howard Brenton’s Christie in Love , which is written specially to be thrown into places and just grab people by the throats at once’. The mild mannered serial killer, John Christie was played by William Hoyland in a naturalistic style whilst the interrogating police were grotesque caricatures – this mix of styles became

1134-562: A left wing tendency within Lettrism , an artistic and literary movement led by the Romanian-born French poet and visual artist Isidore Isou , originating in 1940s Paris. The group was heavily influenced by the preceding avant-garde movements of Dadaism and Surrealism , seeking to apply critical theories based on these concepts to all areas of art and culture, most notably in poetry, film, painting and political theory . Among some of

1260-591: A man, for reasons of personal revenge and cynism, tries to bring down the Government – by blackmailing the Prime Minister, threatening to expose the MP’s homosexuality’ but when the blackmailer is beaten by the system he turns to working class revolution and violence. Theatre critic Michael Billington felt that it was a short-coming of Brenton’s play that ‘all politicians and power seekers [are shown] as irredeemably corrupt’ and

1386-838: A member of the Lettrist International , and Asger Jorn of the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus , brought together a group of artistic collectives for the First World Congress of Free Artists in Alba , Italy. The meeting established the foundation for the development of the Situationist International, which was officially formed in July 1957 at a meeting in Cosio di Arroscia , Italy. The resulting International

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1512-448: A modern and comprehensive critique of mid-20th century advanced capitalism . Essential to situationist theory was the concept of the spectacle , a unified critique of advanced capitalism of which a primary concern was the progressively increasing tendency towards the expression and mediation of social relations through images . The situationists believed that the shift from individual expression through directly lived experiences, or

1638-689: A play that deals with an emotional relationship between a mother and her daughter. The original production at the Royal National Theatre starred Judi Dench , Samantha Bond , and Ronald Pickup . Dench starred in the Broadway transfer, earning the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play in 1999. In 2001, Hare wrote My Zinc Bed , which premiered at the Royal Court Theatre starring Tom Wilkinson , Julia Ormond , and Steven Mackintosh . The play

1764-486: A putative critique of the exploitation of women in the sex industry and criminal justice system.’ The confrontational relationship the production took towards the audience in relation to the depiction of drug use, sex and violence led to controversy. Wilson quipped: ‘ Lay By … has taken years off my life. We have alienated permanently a section of the British theatre-going public. People have fainted, passed out and dropped over

1890-418: A rereading of Karl Marx 's Das Kapital and advocates a cultural revolution in western countries . During the first few years of the SI's founding, avant-garde artistic groups began collaborating with the SI and joining the organization. Gruppe SPUR , a German artistic collective, collaborated with the Situationist International on projects beginning in 1959, continuing until the group officially joined

2016-409: A reworking of Plays for Rubber Go Go Girls in the summer. Their choice of a rarely performed Ibsen play in the autumn, When We Dead Awaken , proved to be ‘quite a traumatic experience for everyone concerned because it had such a vast emotional and imaginative span.’ The Ibsen play was in repertory with Go Go Girls and a new commissioned piece Point 101 . Here 7 ten minutes pieces were responses to

2142-547: A tendency towards political theory over the more artistic aspects of the SI. The shift in the intellectual priorities within the SI resulted in more focus on the theoretical, such as the theory of the spectacle and Marxist critical analysis, spending much less time on the more artistic and tangible concepts like unitary urbanism , détournement , and situgraphy . During this period the SI began having more and more influence on local university students in France. Taking advantage of

2268-435: A thirteen week season and then let them go. Griffiths wanted a company – three men and three women – to operate as a theatre workshop whereby writers worked with the players in the shaping of the material and the development of projects. Now Hare and Bicât were ‘sleeping directors’ of Portable and Malcolm Griffiths was given carte blanche to set up the workshop company. ‘[We] told him to get on and do whatever he wanted, with

2394-401: A touring company, hence, ‘portable’ theatre. '[They] work in basic outfits and with no setting other than chairs but, notwithstanding this, they manage to create and sustain a powerful, audience holding piece.' Augusta Hope, their administrator, was successful at getting sponsorship – an electric typewriter from Olympia and a heavily subsidised VW van from Volkswagen. With a slight rejigging of

2520-529: A week at the Open Space Theatre . However there had been clashes between Hare and Griffiths in Edinburgh over the direction that the company should take. Hare wanted to utilise ‘the arena of public statement’ presenting fewer plays in larger theatres, as opposed to the familiar underground circuit. Griffiths however wanted to rethink the company’s attitude to actors. Up to this point Portable hired actors for

2646-598: A weekend job to ‘blow’ a safe in Liverpool – they make a mess of things and their gelignite blows up a dog. A guard’s throat is slit by a Laingian spouting girlfriend. Wilson was accused of gratuitous horror and the play ‘faced outrage from many of his audiences’ In the autumn Blow Job played at the Kings Head Theatre Club, Islington whilst Lay By had a Sunday evening production at the Royal Court and then ran for

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2772-529: Is a central notion in situationist theory, developed by Guy Debord in his 1967 book, The Society of the Spectacle . In its limited sense, spectacle means the mass media, which are "its most glaring superficial manifestation." Debord said that the society of the spectacle came to existence in the late 1920s. The critique of the spectacle is a development and application of Karl Marx's concept of fetishism of commodities , reification and alienation , and

2898-526: Is acted out by four great writers: Jane Austen ; T. S. Eliot ; William Wordsworth and Alexander Pope '. It was directed by Tony Bicât . By the end of this tour the sheer exhaustion of life on the road was getting to Hare and Bicât: "we were doing the laundry, we were doing the lights, we were buying the props, we were driving the van, we were organising the meals and we were just about going out of our minds after five months of this. Hare and Bicât were developing projects outside of Portable and Snoo Wilson

3024-693: Is an English playwright , screenwriter and theatre director . Best known for his stage work, Hare has also enjoyed great success with films, receiving two Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay for writing The Hours in 2002 and The Reader in 2008. In the West End , he had his greatest success with the plays Plenty (1978), which he adapted into a 1985 film starring Meryl Streep , Racing Demon (1990), Skylight (1997), and Amy's View (1998). The four plays ran on Broadway in 1982–83, 1996, 1998 and 1999 respectively, earning Hare three Tony Award nominations for Best Play for

3150-583: Is examined in the Reputations strand on TheatreVoice . He is particularly well known for incisive commentary on the problems of public institutions. Raymond Williams once said, sardonically, that the public services are largely managed by the nation's "upper servants". Hare addresses this group, providing an analysis of the workings of the institutions: he is, he has said, interested in the struggle to make procedures work better – right now – not in waiting until some revolution, somehow, sometime, comes about to raze

3276-568: Is in part about conflicting points of view – about how reactionaries and leftists look at geopolitics, how journalists and novelists look at events and how the West and the Third World look at each other." In 1985, Hare wrote Pravda with Howard Brenton , its title referring to the Russian Communist party newspaper Pravda . The play, a satire on the mid-1980s newspaper industry, in particular

3402-565: Is on trial for committing war crimes during the Holocaust . The film was well reviewed and earned Hare his second Academy Award nomination. He also received BAFTA and Golden Globe Award nominations. Hare's 2011 play South Downs , based on his based on his own experiences of being schooled at Lancing College, was well received at the Chichester Festival , and was adapted as a Saturday Drama on BBC Radio 4 . In December 2011, it

3528-521: Is the "how and why" that happened. Charles de Gaulle , in the aftermath televised speech of 7 June, acknowledged that "This explosion was provoked by groups in revolt against modern consumer and technical society, whether it be the communism of the East or the capitalism of the West." They also made up the majority in the Occupation Committee of the Sorbonne . An important event leading up to May 1968

3654-460: The Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay nomination as well as BAFTA Award , Golden Globe Award nominations. In 2008, he adapted Bernhard Schlink 's 1995 novel into Stephen Daldry 's film The Reader starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes . The film focuses on a romance in the 1950s between a teenaged boy and an older woman who is later discovered to have been a Nazi guard and

3780-541: The Bloody Sunday shootings. England’s Ireland was ‘an episodic look at the history of the British in Northern Ireland with different episodes shown from different perspectives’ The writers: Bicât, Hare, Wilson, Brenton, Brian Clark and Francis Fuchs visiting Belfast whilst researching the play‘ but none of us pretended to be experts’ – Hare and Wilson co-directed . Initially publicity for England’s Ireland utilised

3906-677: The Merchant Navy . His father's elder brother was the cricketer Steriker Hare . The Hare family claims descent from the Earls of Bristol . Hare was educated at Lancing College , an independent school in Sussex, and at Jesus College, Cambridge (MA (Cantab.), English Literature). While at Cambridge, he was the hiring manager on the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club Committee in 1968. Hare worked with

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4032-635: The National Theatre and received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play . The play transferred to the Broadway stage at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre in 1995. The production starred Paul Giamatti , Denis O'Hare , and Kathleen Chalfant . The play was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play . In 1995, Hare's translation of Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht

4158-725: The New York Drama Critics Circle Award , and he received the Golden Bear in 1985. Hare has been associate director of the National Theatre since 1984. David Hare was born in St Leonards-on-Sea , Hastings , Sussex , and was raised – first in a flat, then in a semi-detached house – in Bexhill-on-Sea , the son of Agnes Cockburn (née Gilmour) and Clifford Theodore Rippon Hare, a passenger ship's purser in

4284-547: The Paris Commune in which it exhibited itself as the revolutionary moment. The SI's interest in the Paris Commune was expressed in 1962 in their fourteen "Theses on the Paris Commune" . The first edition of Internationale Situationniste defined psychogeography as "the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment (whether consciously organized or not) on the emotions and behavior of individuals." The term

4410-689: The Portable Theatre Company from 1968 to 1971. His first play, Slag , was produced in 1970, the same year in which he married his first wife, Margaret Matheson; the couple had three children and divorced in 1980. He was Resident Dramatist at the Royal Court Theatre , London, from 1970 to 1971, and in 1973 became resident dramatist at the Nottingham Playhouse . He co-founded the Joint Stock Theatre Company with David Aukin and Max Stafford-Clark in 1975. Hare's play Plenty

4536-512: The Royal Court Theatre Upstairs - Revenge - a ‘satirical melodrama’ about the relationship between criminals and the police and society. Brenton’s play for Portable was Christie In Love and it was toured from November prior to being brought to Oval House. Hare directed Christie in Love and explains the way commissioned material was developed to meet the company’s needs: ‘we started to shape plays deliberately to be portable –

4662-525: The Stephen Daldry dramas The Hours (2002) and The Reader (2008) and BBC 's Page Eight (2011) and Netflix 's Collateral (2018). In addition to his two Academy Award nominations, Hare has received three Golden Globe Award nominations, three Tony Award nominations and has won a BAFTA Award , a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and two Laurence Olivier Awards. He has also been awarded several critics' awards, such as

4788-646: The Toronto International Film Festival to positive reviews. It later received the BAFTA Award for Outstanding British Film nomination. In 2020, Hare contracted COVID-19 , an experience reflected in his monologue Beat the Devil , with Ralph Fiennes in the starring role. In 2022, Hare wrote, Straight Line Crazy . The play is set in the 1920s through the 1960s in New York City and centres on

4914-599: The dérive , an unplanned tour through an urban landscape directed entirely by the feelings evoked in the individual by their surroundings, serving as the primary means for mapping and investigating the psychogeography of these different areas. During this period the Letterist International also developed the situationist tactic of détournement , which by reworking or re-contextualizing an existing work of art or literature sought to radically shift its meaning to one with revolutionary significance. In 1956, Guy Debord,

5040-421: The economic base of a given society; accordingly, they rejected "situationism" as an absurd and self-contradictory concept. In The Society of the Spectacle , Debord asserted that ideology was "the abstract will to universality and the illusion thereof" which was "legitimated in modern society by universal abstraction and by the effective dictatorship of illusion". The situationist movement had its origins as

5166-433: The public discourse , and how they attack the artworks that express comprehensive critique of society, by saying that art should not involve itself into politics. The first edition of Internationale Situationniste defines the constructed situation as "a moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambiance and a game of events." As the SI embraced dialectical Marxism,

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5292-534: The public discourse . Such ideas get first trivialized and sterilized, and then they are safely incorporated back within mainstream society, where they can be exploited to add new flavors to old dominant ideas. This technique of the spectacle is sometimes called recuperation , and its counter-technique is the détournement . A détournement is a technique developed in the 1950s by the Letterist International , and consist in "turning expressions of

5418-410: The 15 years from its formation in 1957 and its dissolution in 1972, is characterized by a Marxist and surrealist perspective on aesthetics and politics, without separation between the two: art and politics are faced together and in revolutionary terms. The SI analyzed the modern world from the point of view of everyday life. The core arguments of the Situationist International were an attack on

5544-651: The Australian media and press baron Rupert Murdoch , stars Anthony Hopkins in a role that earned him the Laurence Olivier Award . Hare became the associate director of the National Theatre in 1984, and has since seen many of his plays produced, including his trilogy about major British institutions: Racing Demon , Murmuring Judges , and The Absence of War . He has also directed many other plays aside from his own works, notable examples being The Pleasure Principle by Snoo Wilson , Weapons of Happiness by Howard Brenton, and King Lear by William Shakespeare for

5670-501: The Baroque, and the age of chivalry, with its tradition of long adventures voyages. Such urban roaming was characteristic of Left Bank bohemianism in Paris. In the SI's 6th issue, Raoul Vaneigem writes in a manifesto of unitary urbanism, "All space is occupied by the enemy. We are living under a permanent curfew. Not just the cops—the geometry". Dérive, as a previously conceptualized tactic in

5796-577: The Durruti Column ", Andre Bertrand 's détourned comic strip. They then invited the situationists to contribute a critique of the University of Strasbourg, and On the Poverty of Student Life , written by Tunisian situationist Mustapha/Omar Khayati was the result. The students promptly proceeded to print 10,000 copies of the pamphlet using university funds and distributed them during a ceremony marking

5922-608: The French fashion designer Nicole Farhi in 1992. In 1993, Hare's best friend Sarah Matheson was diagnosed with Multiple System Atrophy and died from the disease in 1999. In January 2015, Hare broadcast the BBC Radio 4 appeal to raise money for the Multiple System Atrophy Trust, which was founded by Matheson. Selected credits For his work in theatre, he has received eight Laurence Olivier Award nominations, winning

6048-443: The French military, was "a calculated action determined by the absence of a greater locus", and "a maneuver within the enemy's field of vision". To the SI, whose interest was inhabiting space, the dérive brought appeal in this sense of taking the "fight" to the streets and truly indulging in a determined operation. The dérive was a course of preparation, reconnaissance, a means of shaping situationist psychology among urban explorers for

6174-668: The Mean Knight) in February and Strindberg 's The Creditors in June - Portable were gaining public attention and had developed a powerful house style with new work. Hare: ‘[Portable] expressed what the four of us were thinking at the time and what we had to say about the world.’ Hare explained the shortcomings of ‘mainstream’ theatre: ‘We felt that plays about psychology were simply irrelevant to what we took to be our country's terminal decline.’ The lifting of theatre censorship in 1968 had provided

6300-448: The National Theatre. Hare is also the author of a collection of lectures on the arts and politics called Obedience, Struggle, and Revolt (2005). In 1990, Hare wrote Racing Demon ; part of a trio of plays about British institutions, it focuses on the Church of England , and tackles issues such as gay ordination , and the role of evangelism in inner-city communities. The play debuted at

6426-818: The New York stage with Fiennes at The Shed in October 2022. In 1993, Hare sold his archive to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin . The archive consists of typescript drafts, notes, rehearsal scripts, schedules, production notes, correspondence, theatre programs, resumes, photographs, and published texts associated with Hare's plays, teleplays, screenplays, and essays, as well as foreign-language translations of Hare's works; works by other authors; personal correspondence; minutes of meetings; and Hare's English papers from Cambridge University . Hare married

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6552-545: The Portable writers with the opportunity to challenge dominant ideas including those of what constituted ‘good taste’, hence Bicât’s comment: ‘…We wanted our work to shock. Plays…were designed to shake the audience and therefore the establishment. ’ Howard Brenton’s Fruit , directed by Hare, opened at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Brenton explained how he was ‘influenced by some French Situationist texts…In Fruit

6678-420: The Portable ‘label’ – but presumably to avoid confusion by the end of May ‘Mr. Hare …. announced the formation of Shoot , a company soon to embark on tours of large provincial theatres with plays on public themes’ The political nature of the play and the costs of touring a 12 actor show were problematic: ‘Some managements didn’t like the idea, some didn’t like the play. And many didn’t want to put their heads on

6804-523: The SI back into the old fold of artistic praxis. The majority of SI continued to refuse such offers and any involvement on the conventional avant-garde artistic plane. This principle was affirmed since the founding of the SI in 1957, but the qualitative step of resolving all the contradictions of having situationists that make concessions to the cultural market, was made with the exclusion of Gruppe SPUR in 1962. The SI noted how reactionary forces forbid subversive ideas from artists and intellectuals to reach

6930-479: The SI in 1961. The role of the artists in the SI was of great significance, particularly Asger Jorn , Constant Nieuwenhuys and Pinot Gallizio . Asger Jorn, who invented Situgraphy and Situlogy , had the social role of catalyst and team leader among the members of the SI between 1957 and 1961. Jorn's role in the situationist movement (as in COBRA ) was that of a catalyst and team leader. Guy Debord on his own lacked

7056-710: The SI's demands on a much wider scale. After the end of the movement, the CMDO disbanded. By 1972, Gianfranco Sanguinetti and Guy Debord were the only two remaining members of the SI. Working with Debord, in August 1975, Sanguinetti wrote a pamphlet titled Rapporto veridico sulle ultime opportunità di salvare il capitalismo in Italia ( The Real Report on the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy ), which (inspired by Bruno Bauer ) purported to be

7182-506: The South West and East Anglia. Although in May 1971 Hare said that ‘he no longer has anything to do with Portable Theatre’ he did seem to be instrumental in an ambitious collaborative group writing project in which Howard Brenton, Brian Clark, Trevor Griffiths , David Hare, Stephen Poliakoff , Hugh Stoddart, and Snoo Wilson contributed sections of a play. It fell upon Snoo Wilson to draw together

7308-405: The Spectacle (1967) and Khayati's On the Poverty of Student Life (1966), were written on the walls of Paris and several provincial cities. This was documented in the collection of photographs published in 1968 by Walter Lewino , L'imagination au pouvoir . Though the SI were a very small group, they were expert self-propagandists, and their slogans appeared daubed on walls throughout Paris at

7434-581: The Spectacle (1972). By 1950, a much younger and more left-wing part of the Lettrist movement began to emerge. This group kept very active in perpetrating public outrages such as the Notre-Dame Affair , where at the Easter High Mass at Notre Dame de Paris , in front of ten thousand people and broadcast on national TV, their member and former Dominican Michel Mourre posed as a monk , "stood in front of

7560-412: The World was produced at the Royal National Theatre . The production starred Bill Nighy , Diana Quick , and Ronald Hines . The play is set at the Unesco conference on poverty held in Bombay in 1978. It transferred to The Public Theatre in 1985, starring Alfre Woodard , Elizabeth McGovern , and Zeljko Ivanek . In a mixed review, The New York Times theatre critic Frank Rich wrote: "The play

7686-453: The altar and read a pamphlet proclaiming that God was dead". André Breton prominently came out in support of the action in a letter that spawned a large debate in the newspaper Combat . In 1952, this left wing of the Lettrist movement, which included Debord, broke off from Isou's group and formed the Letterist International , a new Paris-based collective of avant-garde artists and political theorists. The schism finally erupted when

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7812-405: The apathy of their colleagues, five "Pro-situs", situationist-influenced students, infiltrated the University of Strasbourg 's student union in November 1966 and began scandalising the authorities. Their first action was to form an " anarchist appreciation society" called The Society for the Rehabilitation for Karl Marx and Ravachol ; next they appropriated union funds to flypost "Return of

7938-610: The award twice, for Racing Demon in 1990 and Skylight in 1996. He has also received three Tony Award nominations for Plenty in 1985, Racing Demon in 1996 and Skylight in 1997. He also received the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (1975), a BAFTA Award (1979), the New York Drama Critics Circle Award (1983), and the London Theatre Critics' Award (1990). Hare has received various award nominations for his film work, including two Academy Award nominations for The Hours (2002), and The Reader (2008); two Golden Globe Award nominations; and five BAFTA Award nominations. He

8064-489: The back of the rostra at the Traverse.’ ' Lay By enjoyed a ‘Succès de scandale ….partly because the Traverse cleverly scheduled it at 1.15 in the morning. This gave it a special glamour' Portable took two other productions to the festival playing in repertory at the Pool Theatre. Malcolm Griffiths had commissioned Plays for Rubber Go-Go Girls from Sheffield playwright Christopher Wilkinson and David Hare directed Snoo Wilson’s new play Blow Job . Plays for Rubber Go-Go Girls

8190-406: The beginning of the academic year . This provoked an immediate outcry in the local, national and international media. The Situationists played a preponderant role in the May 1968 uprisings, and to some extent their political perspective and ideas fueled such crisis, providing a central theoretic foundation. While SI's member count had been steadily falling for the preceding several years,

8316-406: The block over a controversial project they didn’t originate’ England’s Ireland opened at the Mickery Theatre, Amsterdam followed by five UK dates The Arts Council had insisted that a professional administration be appointed when Augusta Hope had left. Bicât commented ‘ Malcolm [Griffiths] did interesting work with the company, but the administrator failed to administrate. In 18 months the company

8442-414: The capitalist degradation of the life of people and the fake models advertised by the mass media, to which the Situationist responded with alternative life experiences. The alternative life experiences explored by the Situationists were the construction of situations, unitary urbanism , psychogeography , and the union of play, freedom and critical thinking . A major stance of the SI was to count on

8568-410: The capitalist system against itself," like turning slogans and logos against the advertisers or the political status quo. Détournement was prominently used to set up subversive political pranks, an influential tactic called situationist prank that was reprised by the punk movement in the late 1970s and inspired the culture jamming movement in the late 1980s. The Situationist International, in

8694-543: The cast in January, Inside Out set off on road – performing at universities, colleges, arts labs and arts centres – travelling more than fifteen hundred miles in their first year As a writer-led company they were in a stronger position to receive Arts Council subsidy than actor-led experimental companies. Inside Out received a ‘new writing’ grant and their policy of taking theatre to non-tradition venues and audiences would continue to make them successful in getting further grants. David Hare's first play How Brophy Made Good

8820-472: The closest cultural precedents to the dérive . The first in 1921, was an excursion to the Church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre with the Parisian Dadaists ; the second excursion was on 1 May 1923, when a small group of Surrealists walked toward the countryside outside of Blois . Debord was cautious however to differentiate between the derive and such precedents. He emphasized its active character as "a mode of experimental behavior" that reached to Romanticism ,

8946-494: The collective organization of a unitary ambiance and a game of events". The situationists argued that advanced capitalism manufactured false desires; literally in the sense of ubiquitous advertising and the glorification of accumulated capital , and more broadly in the abstraction and reification of the more ephemeral experiences of authentic life into commodities . The experimental direction of situationist activity consisted of setting up temporary environments favorable to

9072-521: The company’s artistic director. Bicât and Hare also knew Griffiths from Cambridge. He had then worked for four years in repertory theatre where he had become disillusioned by what he saw as their ‘reactionary’ programming '…. I told them exactly what I thought’. He began his season with Portable in April directing two new John Grillo plays, Zonk and Food at Edinburgh, London, Nottingham, the Midlands, Yorkshire,

9198-399: The concept of 20th-century art that is separated from topical political events. The SI believed that the notion of artistic expression being separated from politics and current events is one proliferated by reactionary considerations to render artwork that expresses comprehensive critiques of society impotent. They recognized there was a precise mechanism followed by reactionaries to defuse

9324-600: The concepts and artistic innovations developed by the Lettrists were the lettrie , a poem reflecting pure form yet devoid of all semantic content, new syntheses of writing and visual art identified as metagraphics and hypergraphics , as well as new creative techniques in filmmaking. Future situationist Guy Debord , who was at that time a significant figure in the Lettrist movement, helped develop these new film techniques, using them in his Lettrist film Howlings for Sade (1952) as well as later in his situationist film Society of

9450-459: The condition that they performed in the Arts Lab theatre. Prior to ‘Portable’ Bicât and Hare had staged an adaption of Kafka ’s The Trial whilst students at Cambridge University and now through Haynes’s encouragement they developed a theatre piece intercutting Kafka’s diaries with selected other writings that became Inside Out . The actors were recruited from Arts Lab regulars and this was to be

9576-607: The current system altogether, to replace it with perfection. In 2016, Hare wrote the screenplay for Denial based on Deborah Lipstadt 's History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier . The film starred Tom Wilkinson , Rachel Weisz , and Timothy Spall . The film dramatises the Irving v Penguin Books Ltd case, in which Lipstadt, a Holocaust scholar, was sued by Holocaust denier David Irving for libel . The film premiered at

9702-526: The cynical writing of "Censor", a powerful industrialist. The pamphlet argued that the ruling class of Italy supported the Piazza Fontana bombing and other covert, false flag mass slaughter for the higher goal of defending the capitalist status quo from communist influence. The pamphlet was mailed to 520 of Italy's most powerful individuals. It was received as genuine and powerful politicians, industrialists and journalists praised its content. After reprinting

9828-495: The determinant action of general natural forces, such as soil composition or climatic conditions, on the economic structures of a society, and thus on the corresponding conception that such a society can have of the world. Psychogeography could set for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, whether consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals. The charmingly vague adjective psychogeographical can be applied to

9954-542: The dérive includes both this letting go and its necessary contradiction: the domination of psychogeographical variations by the knowledge and calculation of their possibilities. SI engaged in a play-form that was also practiced by its predecessor organization, the Lettrist International , the art of wandering through urban space, which they termed dérive , whose unique mood is conveyed in Debord's darkly romantic meaning of palindrome. Two excursions organized by Andre Breton serve as

10080-645: The eventuality of the situationist city. Defunct Twelve issues of the main French edition of journal Internationale Situationniste were published, each issue edited by a different individual or group, including: Guy Debord , Hadj Mohamed Dahou , Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio , Maurice Wyckaert , Constant Nieuwenhuys , Asger Jorn , Helmut Sturm , Attila Kotanyi , Jørgen Nash , Uwe Lausen , Raoul Vaneigem , Michèle Bernstein , Jeppesen Victor Martin , Jan Strijbosch , Alexander Trocchi , Théo Frey , Mustapha Khayati , Donald Nicholson-Smith , René Riesel , and René Viénet . Classic Situationist texts include: On

10206-459: The findings arrived at by this type of investigation, to their influence on human feelings, and more generally to any situation or conduct that seems to reflect the same spirit of discovery. By definition, psychogeography combines subjective and objective knowledge and studies. Debord struggled to stipulate the finer points of this theoretical paradox, ultimately producing "Theory of the Dérive" in 1958,

10332-496: The first three and two Laurence Olivier Awards for Best New Play . His other notable projects on stage include A Map of the World , Pravda (starring Anthony Hopkins at the Royal National Theatre in London), Murmuring Judges , The Absence of War , The Vertical Hour , and his latest play Straight Line Crazy starring Ralph Fiennes . He wrote screenplays for films including

10458-463: The first-hand fulfillment of authentic desires, to individual expression by proxy through the exchange or consumption of commodities , or passive second-hand alienation, inflicted significant and far-reaching damage to the quality of human life for both individuals and society. Another important concept of situationist theory was the primary means of counteracting the spectacle; the construction of situations, moments of life deliberately constructed for

10584-512: The force of a revolutionary proletariat . This stance was reaffirmed very clearly in a discussion on "To what extent is the SI a political movement?", during the Fourth SI Conference in London. The SI remarked that this is a core Situationist principle, and that those that don't understand it and agree with it, are not Situationist. The SI rejected all art that separated itself from politics,

10710-694: The formation), the Danish artist Asger Jorn (who after parting with the SI also founded the Scandinavian Institute of Comparative Vandalism ), the architect and veteran of the Hungarian Uprising Attila Kotanyi , and the French writer Michele Bernstein . Debord and Bernstein later married. In June 1957, Debord wrote the manifesto of the Situationist International, titled Report on the Construction of Situations . This manifesto plans

10836-603: The former marking the publication of the two most significant texts of the situationist movement, The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord and The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem . The expressed writing and political theory of the two aforementioned texts, along with other situationist publications, proved greatly influential in shaping the ideas behind the May 1968 insurrections in France ; quotes, phrases, and slogans from situationist texts and publications were ubiquitous on posters and graffiti throughout France during

10962-469: The fulfillment of true and authentic human desires in response. The Situationist International strongly resisted use of the term "situationism", which Debord called a "meaningless term", adding "[t]here is no such thing as situationism, which would mean a doctrine for interpreting existing conditions". The situationists maintained a philosophical opposition to all ideologies , conceiving of them as abstract superstructures ultimately serving only to justify

11088-517: The future members of the radical Lettrists disrupted a Charlie Chaplin press conference for Limelight at the Hôtel Ritz Paris . They distributed a polemic entitled "No More Flat Feet!", which concluded: "The footlights have melted the make-up of the supposedly brilliant mime. All we can see now is a lugubrious and mercenary old man. Go home Mister Chaplin." Isou was upset with this, his own attitude being that Chaplin deserved respect as one of

11214-404: The great creators of the cinematic art. The breakaway group felt that his work was no longer relevant, while having appreciated it "in its own time," and asserted their belief "that the most urgent expression of freedom is the destruction of idols, especially when they claim to represent freedom," in this case, filmmaker Charlie Chaplin. During this period of the Letterist International , many of

11340-635: The group, Guy Debord , generally became considered the organization's de facto leader and most distinguished theorist. Other members included theorist Raoul Vaneigem , the Dutch painter Constant Nieuwenhuys , the Italo-Scottish writer Alexander Trocchi , the English artist Ralph Rumney (sole member of the London Psychogeographical Association, Rumney suffered expulsion relatively soon after

11466-573: The idea of Room 101 in Orwell ’s Nineteen Eighty-Four . The writers included Michelene Wandor , the only female playwright to be commissioned by Portable and the Ulrike Meinhof section was ‘the result of the company’s collective research and composition’ As Griffiths’ Portable Theatre Workshop Company were finding their feet, David Hare wished to develop another collaborative writing project – this time about Northern Ireland and especially in response to

11592-442: The important concepts and ideas that would later be integral in situationist theory were developed. Individuals in the group collaboratively constructed the new field of psychogeography , which they defined as "the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment (whether consciously organized or not) on the emotions and behavior of individuals." Debord further expanded this concept of psychogeography with his theory of

11718-562: The level of the avant-gardes in other countries. The next significant split was in 1962, wherein the "Nashists," the Scandinavian section of the SI led by Jørgen Nash , were excluded from the organization. Nash created the 2nd Situationist International . By this point the Situationist International consisted almost exclusively of the Franco-Belgian section, led by Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem . These members possessed much more of

11844-629: The life of Robert Moses , portrayed by Fiennes. Fiennes stars as Moses, once a powerful man in New York and the "master builder" of infrastructure from new parks, bridges and expressways. During his working life, he served on the New York State Council of Parks and was the New York Secretary of State . The play premiered at the Bridge Theatre in London in March 2022. The play transferred to

11970-459: The ones that remained were able to fill revolutionary roles for which they had patiently anticipated and prepared. The active ideologists ("enragés" and Situationists) behind the revolutionary events in Strasbourg, Nanterre and Paris, numbered only about one or two dozen persons. This has now been widely acknowledged as a fact by studies of the period, what is still wide open to interpretation

12096-427: The personal warmth and persuasiveness to draw people of different nationalities and talents into an active working partnership. As a prototype Marxist intellectual Debord needed an ally who could patch up the petty egoisms and squabbles of the members. When Jorn's leadership was withdrawn in 1961, many simmering quarrels among different sections of the SI flared up, leading to multiple exclusions. The first major split

12222-483: The pervasive alienation that accompanied the spectacle . The founding manifesto of the Situationist International, Report on the Construction of Situations (1957), defined the construction of situations as "the concrete construction of momentary ambiances of life and their transformation into a superior passional quality." Internationale Situationniste No. 1 (June 1958) defined the constructed situation as "a moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by

12348-514: The purpose of reawakening and pursuing authentic desires, experiencing the feeling of life and adventure, and the liberation of everyday life. The situationists recognized that capitalism had changed since Karl Marx 's formative writings, but maintained that his analysis of the capitalist mode of production remained fundamentally correct; they rearticulated and expanded upon several classical Marxist concepts, such as his theory of alienation . In their expanded interpretation of Marxist theory ,

12474-407: The role of a gear wheel in the mechanism of the society of the spectacle. According to this theory, artists and intellectuals that accept such compromises are rewarded by the art dealers and praised by the dominant culture. The SI received many offers to sponsor "creations" that would just have a "situationist" label but a diluted political content, that would have brought things back to order and

12600-419: The role of subversive artists and intellectuals, that is, to reframe them as separated from the most topical events, and divert from them the taste for the new that may dangerously appeal the masses; after such separation, such artworks are sterilized, banalized, degraded, and can be safely integrated into the official culture and the public discourse, where they can add new flavors to old dominant ideas and play

12726-419: The situation came to refer less to a specific avant-garde practice than to the dialectical unification of art and life more generally. Beyond this theoretical definition, the situation as a practical manifestation thus slipped between a series of proposals. The SI thus were first led to distinguish the situation from the mere artistic practice of the happening , and later identified it in historical events such as

12852-503: The situationists asserted that the misery of social alienation and commodity fetishism were no longer limited to the fundamental components of capitalist society, but had now in advanced capitalism spread themselves to every aspect of life and culture. They rejected the idea that advanced capitalism's apparent successes—such as technological advancement, increased productive capacity, and a raised general quality of life when compared to previous systems, such as feudalism—could ever outweigh

12978-462: The social dysfunction and degradation of everyday life that it simultaneously inflicted. When the Situationist International was first formed, it had a predominantly artistic focus; emphasis was placed on concepts like unitary urbanism and psychogeography . Gradually, however, that focus shifted more towards revolutionary and political theory. The Situationist International reached the apex of its creative output and influence in 1967 and 1968, with

13104-452: The sole condition that it be different from what we had done. This permanent company –‘nobody can be sacked’ - started in April 1972 with Nick Ball; Michael Harringan; Diana Patrick; Mark Penfold; Pat Rossiter and Emma Williams. Griffiths was director, stage manager and, since Augusta Hope left Portable about this time, was also initially the company administrator. Portable Theatre Workshop Company - familiarly known as ‘POTOWOCA’ - started with

13230-536: The time of the revolt. SI member René Viénet 's 1968 book Enragés and Situationists in the Occupations Movement, France, May '68 gives an account of the involvement of the SI with the student group of Enragés and the occupation of the Sorbonne . The occupations of 1968 started at the University of Nanterre and spread to the Sorbonne. The police tried to take back the Sorbonne and a riot ensued. Following this

13356-433: The tract as a small book, Sanguinetti revealed himself to be the true author. In the outcry that ensued and under pressure from Italian authorities Sanguinetti left Italy in February 1976, and was denied entry to France. After publishing in the last issue of the magazine, an analysis of the May 1968 revolts and the strategies that will need to be adopted in future revolutions, the SI was dissolved in 1972. The Spectacle

13482-408: The uprisings. The term "situationist" refers to the construction of situations, one of the early central concepts of the Situationist International; the term also refers to any individuals engaged in the construction of situations, or, more narrowly, to members of the Situationist International. Situationist theory sees the situation as a tool for the liberation of everyday life, a method of negating

13608-428: The way it was reprised by György Lukács in 1923. In the society of the spectacle, the commodities rule the workers and the consumers instead of being ruled by them. The consumers are passive subjects that contemplate the reified spectacle. As early as 1958, in the situationist manifesto , Debord described official culture as a "rigged game", where conservative powers forbid subversive ideas to have direct access to

13734-501: The work endorsed ‘the climactic gesture of a revolutionary warehouseman who flings a home-made bomb against a wall to symbolise his contempt for authority.’ Fruit was in repertory that autumn with a new play by David Hare, What Happened to Blake? Described in the Kensington Post as ‘a brilliant, off-beat play …. that is every bit as eccentric, brilliant and unpredictable as [William] Blake …his weird and sometimes hilarious life

13860-537: The writing and to direct what became Lay By - premiered at the Edinburgh Festival. The writers used as springboard a lurid Sunday tabloid account of a court case concerning alleged rape. Chris Megson: ‘ Lay By offers a kaleidoscope of perspectives on the plight of Lesley, a struggling drug user and porn model, who accuses a van driver of raping her ….The action retraces the events of the encounter while detailing Leslie’s difficult life and background; it also offers

13986-552: Was knighted in the 1998 Queen's Birthday Honours List "For services to the Theatre". This allows him to use the title Sir . He was awarded the Honorary degree of Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) by the University of East Anglia in 2010. Situationist The Situationist International ( SI ) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists . It

14112-543: Was a fusion of these extremely small avant-garde collectives: the Lettrist International , the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus (an offshoot of COBRA ), and the London Psychogeographical Association (though, Anselm Jappe has argued that the group pivoted around Jorn and Debord for the first four years). Later, the Situationist International drew ideas from other groups such as Socialisme ou Barbarie . The most prominent member of

14238-523: Was a recognition that Gruppe SPUR 's "principles, methods and goals" were significantly in contrast with those of the SI. This split however was not a declaration of hostilities, as in other cases of SI exclusions. A few months after the exclusion, in the context of judicial prosecution against the group by the German state, Debord expressed his esteem to Gruppe SPUR, calling it the only significant artist group in (Germany) since World War II , and regarding it at

14364-561: Was adapted into a television film of the same name in 2008. The play received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play nomination, Hare's eighth Olivier Award nomination. The following year Hare wrote the screenplay for The Hours (2002) adapted from the Michael Cunningham book of the same name . The film starred an ensemble cast that included Meryl Streep , Julianne Moore , and Nicole Kidman as women from three different time periods struggling against adversity. Hare received

14490-710: Was announced that his monologue Wall about the Israeli West Bank barrier was being adapted by Cam Christiansen as a live-action/animated documentary by the National Film Board of Canada ; originally slated for completed in 2014, Wall premiered at the Calgary International Film Festival in 2017. In November 2012, The New School for Drama selected Hare as temporary Artist-in-residence , during which he interacted with student playwrights about his experience in varying mediums. His career

14616-707: Was awarded the Berlin Film Festival Golden Bear in 1985. In 1997, he was a member of the jury at the 47th Berlin International Film Festival . He has also received various honours including knighthoods, degrees, and fellows. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1985. This gave him the Post Nominal Letters "FRSL" for Life. He was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by Jesus College, Cambridge , in 2001. He

14742-797: Was bankrupt.’ Following the winding up of Portable, Hare joined David Aukin and Max Stafford-Clark in the creation of Joint Stock Theatre Company (in 1974) under Joint Stock Theatre Company’s auspices, David Hare directed a Tony Bicat play: Devil’s Island (with Simon Callow in the cast) in 1976. Meanwhile Portable Theatre Workshop Company continued under Griffiths’ guidance with a new name 'Paradise Foundry' Their first productions were Snoo Wilson’s Vampyre and David Edgar ’s Operation Iskra . Later there would be company devised pieces - Yin Yan Thank You Ma’am and Plastic prior to that company folding in 1975. David Hare (playwright) Sir David Rippon Hare FRSL (born 5 June 1947 )

14868-419: Was directed and designed by Griffiths. The four short plays satirise the sex and violence of American pulp magazines targeted at US service-men – with stock characters of Nazi war criminals, Vietnam soldiers, revolutionaries, hippies and ‘go-go’ dancers. ‘Malcolm Griffiths’ direction finds a fast, fluid, cartoon acting style that puts across the full sickening morality’ Blow Job concerns two skinheads who go on

14994-417: Was directed by Tony Bicât and it joined their repertoire. Brophy is an apolitical television ‘personality’ whose career and demise is charted and interrogated by three idealistic friends. The Stage newspaper commented: ‘despite a muddle of Socialist politics,[it] is a surprisingly vital and impressive work’ Hare and Bicât had met Snoo Wilson at UEA and when he graduated in the summer, he joined them in

15120-489: Was first recognized in 1955 by Guy Debord while still with the Letterist International: The word psychogeography, suggested by an illiterate Kabyle as a general term for the phenomena a few of us were investigating around the summer of 1953, is not too inappropriate. It does not contradict the materialist perspective of the conditioning of life and thought by objective nature. Geography, for example, deals with

15246-581: Was now taking on a major role, usually directing his own work. Alongside Pericles, the Mean Knight was a ‘comedy’ set in a post-nuclear war Britain - Device of Angels and in February 1971 Pignight toured prior to a London run at the Young Vic. The critic, Dusty Hughes notes that Wilson ‘used fiercely imagined characters in comic and often savage works’ and summarised Pignight ’s plot: ‘a paranoid East End gangster and his prostitute girlfriend are sent to guard

15372-492: Was produced at the National Theatre in 1978. Aside from films, he has also written teleplays such as, for the BBC, Licking Hitler (1978), and, for Thames Television, Saigon: Year of the Cat (1983). Hare founded a film company called Greenpoint Films in 1982, and among screenplays he has written are Plenty , Wetherby , Strapless , and Paris by Night . In 1983, his play A Map of

15498-467: Was produced in London. In 1996, Hare wrote Skylight , a play about a woman who receives an unexpected visit from her former lover whose wife has recently died. Michael Gambon and Lia Williams starred in the original production, which received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play . The following year, the production transferred to the Broadway stage, where it was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play . In 1998, Hare wrote Amy's View ,

15624-460: Was prominent in Europe from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution in 1972. The intellectual foundations of the Situationist International were derived primarily from libertarian Marxism and the avant-garde art movements of the early 20th century, particularly Dada and Surrealism . Overall, situationist theory represented an attempt to synthesize this diverse field of theoretical disciplines into

15750-483: Was the exclusion of Gruppe SPUR, the German section, from the SI on 10 February 1962. Many different disagreements led to the fracture, for example; while at the Fourth SI Conference in London in December 1960, in a discussion about the political nature of the SI, the Gruppe SPUR members disagreed with the core situationist stance of counting on a revolutionary proletariat ; the accusation that their activities were based on

15876-523: Was the scandal in Strasbourg in December 1966. The Union Nationale des Étudiants de France declared itself in favor of the SI's theses, and managed to use public funds to publish Mustapha Khayati 's pamphlet On the Poverty of Student Life . Thousands of copies of the pamphlet were printed and circulated and helped to make the Situationists well known throughout the nonstalinist left. Quotations from two key situationist books, Debord's The Society of

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