Seven Lears: The Pursuit of the Good

Amid a copious output of plays, poetry, and books and essays on theatre over the past thirty years or so, English playwright Howard Barker has written several plays that radically rework canonical play texts. These have included Women Beware Women (from Middleton); (Uncle) Vanya (from Chekhov); and Gertrude-the Cry (from Shakespeare's Hamlet - performed by UWA students in May, 2004). This time he gives his sometimes savage and often humorous treatment to Seven Lears (a ‘prequel’ to Shakespeare’s King Lear) – where, in tracking the progress of Lear from a boy, to a youth, to a ‘bad’ king, Barker sets the question of why the Mother is ‘expunged’ from Shakespeare’s play, and why she is the subject of an ‘unjust but necessary hatred’ from Lear and his three daughters. Barker’s plays are always challenging — to audiences, and to actors and directors. He relishes ambiguities, and rejects clarity and realism as the enemies of his theatre. The theatre does not exist to be an instrument of instruction. He states: ‘Why should the theatre not be obscure? Is life so dazzling in its clarity?’ Indeed. We hope you enjoy the poetry of Barker’s words, and suspend your desire for clarity and realism while students enrolled in the English/theatre unit Avant-Garde Theatre and Performance perform this challenging play.