Hare Stuff Happens

Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-30131-7
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 144 Seiten

Stuff happens... And it's untidy, and freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.' The famous response of Donald Rumsfeld, American Secretary of Defense, to the looting of Baghdad, at a press conference on 11 April 2003, provides the title for a new play, specially written for the Olivier Theatre, about the extraordinary process leading up to the invasion of Iraq. How does the world settle its differences, now there is only one superpower? What happens to leaders risking their credibility with sceptical publics? From events which have dominated international headlines for the last two years David Hare has fashioned both a historical narrative and a human drama about the frustrations of power and the limits of diplomacy. Stuff Happens premiered at the National Theatre, London, in 2004 season and has subsequently been performed around the world. In April 2006, it was given its New York premiere at the Public Theater in this new, slightly updated text.

David Hare has written over thirty stage plays and thirty screenplays for film and television. The plays include Plenty, Pravda (with Howard Brenton), The Secret Rapture, Racing Demon, Skylight, Amy's View, The Blue Room, Via Dolorosa, Stuff Happens, The Absence of War, The Judas Kiss, The Red Barn, The Moderate Soprano, I'm Not Running and Beat the Devil. For cinema, he has written The Hours, The Reader, Damage, Denial, Wetherby and The White Crow among others, while his television films include Licking Hitler, the Worricker Trilogy, Collateral and Roadkill. In a millennial poll of the greatest plays of the twentieth century, five of the top hundred were his.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hare, David

Leseproben

THREE

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An Actor So where to begin? To take the story back – April 25th 1975, the unforgettable event: the fall of Saigon. For the first time there are limits to American power.

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Powell In Vietnam I learned a certain attitude, a certain distrust …

An Actor Major Colin Powell is pulled out of Vietnam six years earlier. By his own description, a serving soldier, schooled in obedience …

Powell The army is the most democratic institution in America.

An Actor November 1968: Powell is in a helicopter which falls to the ground, in his words, ‘like an elevator with a snapped cable’.

Powell After Vietnam, many in my generation vowed that when our turn came to call the shots, we would not quietly acquiesce in half-hearted warfare for half-baked reasons. Politicians start wars; soldiers fight and die in them.

An Actor He is awarded the Legion of Merit and evolves what becomes known as the Powell doctrine:

Powell War should be the politics of last resort.

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An Actor Also in the seventies, Donald Rumsfeld, one-time champion wrestler, Princeton University, is an assistant to Richard Nixon.

Rumsfeld I’d always worried about politicians who spent most of their time getting ready to something as opposed to doing something. And I questioned whether that was a great way to live a life, getting ready as opposed to doing.

An Actor One friend says of Rumsfeld:

Rumsfeld’s First Friend When you play squash with him, you are lucky not to have your head taken off with his racquet. The court is a finite place. If you are between him and the wall, Rumsfeld always fires away.

An Actor A second friend says:

Rumsfeld’s Second Friend In locker-room terms, Don is a towel-snapper.

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An Actor In the same White House, jostling for position, is the young Dick Cheney, who has achieved a total of five student deferments in order to avoid being drafted to Vietnam.

Cheney I had other priorities in the sixties than military service.

An Actor Cheney proves himself willing to take on responsibilities others shirk.

Cheney Memo from Dick Cheney, February 19th 1975. It seems that there are salt-shakers in the Residence which are used for the Congressional meals (little dishes of salt with funny little spoons). Is there some reason that regular salt-shakers are not used for small breakfasts and small stag dinners?

An Actor When Cheney moves into elected politics, he is already uncompromising.

Cheney I never met a weapons system I didn’t vote for.

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An Actor At the same time, at Stanford University, a minister’s daughter from Birmingham, Alabama, Condoleezza Rice, is choosing between a professional music career or a life in academia studying the Soviet bloc.

Rice Like most Americans I listened with some scepticism to the Cold War claim that America was a ‘beacon of democracy’. My ancestors were property – a fraction of a man. Women were not included in those immortal constitutional phrases concerning the right of the people ‘in the course of human events’ to choose who would rule.

An Actor When asked by Yo-Yo Ma:

Yo-Yo Ma Who is your favourite composer?

Rice Brahms.

Yo-Yo Ma Why? Why Brahms?

Rice He’s passionate without being sentimental.

An Actor In her office Rice keeps two mirrors, so she can see her back as well as her front.

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At another university, a Yale professor, Paul Wolfowitz, spends the nineteen seventies chewing over the implications of the involvement in Vietnam which he describes as:

Wolfowitz An over-expenditure of American power.

An Actor An ex-maths whizz, Wolfowitz is in love with the idea of national greatness.

Wolfowitz I focus on geo-strategic issues. I consider myself conceptual. I am willing to re-examine entire precepts of US foreign policy.

An Actor One colleague remarks:

Colleague The word ‘hawk’ doesn’t do Wolfowitz justice. What about ‘velociraptor’?

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An Actor At the same time, in England, a fledgling lawyer, just down from Oxford, is recovering from the sudden, premature death of his mother.

Blair It was late before I had any politics at all.

An Actor A friend remarks:

Blair’s Friend You’d be at a party and you’d turn round and find that Tony had gone. He’d slipped away a couple of hours before. You’d find he was getting up at five o’clock to finish an essay.

An Actor Fired up by an original mix of theology and social duty, Blair will become Britain’s youngest Labour MP. Children will live in Downing Street for the first time in ninety years.

Blair I particularly resent the assumption that if you find Neanderthal elements in the Labour party, you have found the real party.

An Actor He refuses to list his early positions in .

Blair I do not regard being an Opposition front-bench spokesman as a real job. I did not join the Labour Party to join a party of protest. I joined it as a party of government and I will make sure that it is a party of government.

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An Actor And finally, in Sweden, a graduate of Uppsala University, Hans Blix, is finding his way in Liberal Party politics.

Blix I was an amateur actor when I was a student. Theatre teaches you the value of collaboration, of getting on with other people. As well, of course, as being damned enjoyable.

An Actor Blix is already developing an attitude to life which Colin Powell will one day find praiseworthy.

Powell He’s as reliable as a Volvo.

Blix Being aware that one of Powell’s favourite hobbies is working on Volvo engines, I took this as praise.

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An Actor These are the actors, these are the men and women who will play parts in the opening drama of the new century. And at their head is a snappish young man, seeking his fortune in the oil-rich Permian Basin of West Texas, who will, one day, like thirty-eight per cent of his fellow Americans, say he has been born again.

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Bush My faith frees me. Frees me to put the problem of the moment in proper perspective. Frees me to make decisions which others might not like. Frees me to enjoy life and not worry about what comes next.

You know I had a drinking problem. Right now I should be in a bar in Texas, not in the Oval Office. There is only one reason I am in the Oval Office, and not a bar. I found God. I am here because of the power of prayer.

An Actor The elder son of a Kennebunkport dynasty, George W. Bush is considered the joke of the family, beside his more favoured brother Jeb. He only enters politics at the age of forty-seven.

Bush I could not be governor if I did not believe in a divine plan which supersedes all human plans.

An Actor When he runs for President, he observes:

Bush I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can’t explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is...