Top 18 Quotes & Sayings by Howard Barker

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British playwright Howard Barker.

Last updated on September 19, 2024.

Howard Barker is a British playwright, screenwriter and writer of radio drama, painter, poet, and essayist writing predominantly on playwriting and the theatre. The author of an extensive body of dramatic works since the 1970s, he is best known for his plays Scenes from an Execution, Victory, The Castle, The Possibilities, The Europeans, Judith and Gertrude - The Cry as well as being a founding member, primary playwright and stage designer for British theatre company The Wrestling School.

British - Playwright | Born: June 28, 1946

Source: Wikipedia

Theatre should be a taxing experience: the greatest achievement of a writer is to produce a character who creates anxiety.

Howard Barker

I submit all my plays to the National Theatre for rejection. To assure myself I am seeing clearly.

Howard Barker

We are suffocated by writers who want to enlighten us with their truths. For me, the theatre is beautiful because it is a secret, and secrets seduce us, we all want to share secrets.

Howard Barker

I never 'say' anything in my work. I invent a world. Let others decide what is being 'said'.

Howard Barker

I believe in poetic discourse, in the value of speech in a non-naturalistic way; it's speculative.

Howard Barker

When I write, I am not giving a lecture, I am speculating on behavior. Sometimes this is dangerous, but it should be. As I say often, theatre is a dark place and we should keep the light out of it.

Howard Barker

I've often taken important classical, biblical or literary stories and interrogated them. I have tried to reinvigorate Lot by interpreting it differently.

Howard Barker

I am so far as I am aware not at all influenced by dramatists, expect for Shakespeare, who I have to say, it is impossible not to be influenced by if you hold language to be the major element of theatre.

Howard Barker

I have plenty of political views and plenty of social and personal prejudices. I do not, however, value them.

Howard Barker

I'm not interested in observed reality.

Howard Barker

A good play puts the audience through a certain ordeal.

Howard Barker

I don't like sympathetic characters.

Howard Barker

I'm not interested in entertainment.

Howard Barker

It is impossible - now, at this point in the long journey of human culture - to avoid the sense that pain is necessity; that it is neither accident, nor malformation, nor malice, nor misunderstanding, that it is integral to the human character both in its inflicting and in its suffering, this terrible sense Tragedy alone has articulated, and will continue to articulate, and in so doing, make beautiful...

Howard Barker

You emerge from tragedy equipped against lies. After the musical, you're anybody's fool

Howard Barker

I’ve often taken important classical, biblical or literary stories and interrogated them. I have tried to reinvigorate Lot by interpreting it differently.

Howard Barker

Tragedy is the greatest art form of all. It gives us the courage to continue with our life by exposing us to the pain of life. It is unsentimental, it takes us seriously as human beings, it is not condescending. Paradoxically, by seeing pain we are made greater, it becomes a need.

Howard Barker

The artist who makes himself accessible is self-destructive.

Howard Barker

Top 18 Quotes & Sayings by Howard Barker

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