Hurts Given and Received: Howard Barker interview

There is an interesting interview with Howard Barker published on the Theatre Workbook Blog, where he discusses the current season at the Riverside Studios. Read the full interview on the blog.

It appears then that taste is of the utmost importance and this is intrinsic to his concept of dramatic beauty.  Like an archaic finishing school master, Barker wishes his performers to be bastions of deportment.  They are to be disciplined to every last musculature control whether it is physically or verbally.  With such an iron grip over his work it is interesting that he has given two of these pieces to other people to direct.  But he explains that having worked with Gerrard McArthur and Hanna Berrigan for so long he respects their instincts, trusting that they will mirror his own “The Wrestling School is a theatre school, it is an education really…”