In just two-and-a-half weeks, before his latest film Page Eight closes this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, British playwright/film director David Hare has received one of literature’s most coveted awards – the PEN/Pinter prize.
English PEN announced the news less than a week ago on August 26th. The organization will present Hare with the award at a public event scheduled to be held at the British library on October 10th. Hare will make a speech that will be published by Faber and Faber. The British archive is the home of Harold Pinter’s archive.
“In the course of his long, distinguished career, David Hare has never failed to speak out fearlessly on the subject of politics in the broadest sense; this courage, combined with his rich creative talent, makes him a worthy winner of the PEN/Pinter Prize,” said author Lady Antonia Fraser. English PEN established the prize in 2009 in memory of Fraser’s husband, the Nobel-winning playwright Harold Pinter. Her memoirs of their life together, “Must You Go,” were published earlier this year.
The Prize is awarded annually “to a British writer or a writer resident in Britain of outstanding literary merit who, in the words of Harold Pinter’s 2005 Nobel speech, casts an “unflinching, unswerving” gaze upon the world, and shows a “fierce intellectual determination…to define the real truth of our lives and our societies.”
Hare, who was knighted in 1998, has many acclaimed stage plays to his credit. Among them are Plenty, The Absence of War, The Blue Room, Amy’s View and Stuff Happens. His films include Wetherby, Strapless and Paris By Night.
He is a winner of numerous awards including a BAFTA, a Golden Bear and an Olivier Award. He received an Academy Award nomination in 2008 for his adaptation of the novel The Reader. The film itself received five Oscar nominations and a Best Actress Oscar for Kate Winslet.
Page Eight, the closing night gala film of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival on September 17th at Roy Thomson Hall, is the first film he has directed and written in 10 years. This political thriller stars Michael Gambon, Bill Nighy, Rachel Weisz, Ralph Fiennes and Judy Davis.
The judges of this year’s PEN/Pinter prize were Hanif Kureishi (author of My Beautiful Laundrette among others), Lady Antonia Fraser, Gillian Slovo, Claire Tomalin and London Guardian critic Michael Billington.
David Hare will share the 2011 prize with “an imprisoned writer of courage” selected by English PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee in association with Mr. Hare. This half of the prize is awarded to someone who has been persecuted for speaking out about his or her beliefs. The winner will be announced at the October 10th event and will accept the prize alongside David Hare.
David Hare is a co-founder of the Portable Theatre Company. His first play Slag was produced in London at the Hampstead Theatre Club in 1970. He was a resident dramatist at the Royal Court Theatre, London and later at the Nottinghham Playhouse. In 1975 he co-founded the Joint Stock Theatre Company. He began writing for the National Theatre in 1978. He became an associate director of the National Theatre in 1984.
--Dennis Kucherawy
