Politics and the Humanistic Pose: David Hare's 'Wall'

Abstract

David Hare has tried his hand at 'writing history' for the East in a number of plays. In Wall he is keen on conferring an aura of historicity on his personal account, one thinly masked by the manipulation of documentary drama or verbatim theater as theatrical medium. Having promised to deliver an objective, impartial, and 'liberal' study of the Middle East, and aware of the accusations his 'First World' position before the Eastern subject (object) may bring against him, Hare arduously strives to avoid hackneyed representations of the unprivileged. Yet, he turns out to have fallen prey to that same old trap of polarizing and stereotyping. However, this 'historigraphic metadrama' is often treated as having 'authenticity.' Hence, the writers in this paper aim at exploring the Western unilateral fixations of the East behind the façade of humanistic treatment in the playwright's historiographic approach.