Howard Barker

101

Howard Barker : biography

28 June 1946 –

Works

Stage plays

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

Radio plays

  • One afternoon on the 63rd level of the north face of the pyramid of Cheops the Great (1970)
  • Henry V in two parts (1971)
  • Herman, with Mille and Mick (1972)
  • Scenes from an Execution (1984)
  • Albertina
  • The Quick and the Dead, Radio 3 (2004)
  • The Road, The House, The Road (2006) broadcast on Radio 4 to commemorate his sixtieth birthday.
  • Let Me (2006) broadcast to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the Third Programme (Radio 3)

Television plays

  • Cows (1972)
  • Mutinies (1974)
  • The Chauffeur and the Lady (1974)
  • Prowling Offensive (1975) (not transmitted)
  • Conrod
  • Heroes of Labour (1976)
  • All Bleeding (1976) (not produced)
  • Credentials of a Sympathiser (1976)
  • Russia (1977) (not produced)
  • Heaven (1978) (not produced)
  • Pity in History (1984)
  • The Blow, film (1985)
  • Brutopia (1989)

Other writings

Barker has also authored several volumes of poetry (Don’t Exaggerate, The Breath of the Crowd, Gary the Thief, Lullabies for the Impatient, The Ascent of Monte Grappa, and The Tortman Diaries), an opera (Terrible Mouth with music by Nigel Osborne), and three collections of writings on the theatre (Arguments for a Theatre, Death, The One and The Art of Theatre, A Style And Its Origins).