Farr, David
Entry updated 24 October 2022. Tagged: Author, Film, Theatre, TV.
(1969- ) UK director, screenwriter, playwright and author, active in various capacities in the UK Theatre from around 1990, including the direction of several plays. The dramaturgical thrust of several of his dramas engage with Fantastika, though at times only metaphorically. The Nativity (performed 1999; 1999 chap) edgily literalizes various miracles and manifestations clustered around Mary the mother of Jesus Christ; The Danny Crowe Show (performed 2001; 2001 chap) Satirizes the Media Landscape, perhaps hinting at a Near Future literalization of its deadly corruption of its audiences; Night of the Soul (performed 2002; 2002 chap) is a ghost story (see Supernatural Creatures). Two later plays are of more direct sf interest. The protagonists of Water [performed 2007] find their worlds suddenly transformed into habitats Under the Sea, a metaphorized fate that clearly invokes Climate Change. A Dead Body in Taos (first performed 2022; 2022 chap) anatomizes its protagonist through a split narrative: one strand unpacking her life in the "free" but ultimately estranging 1960s, the second depicting her Near Future attempt to achieve something like Immortality by recreating herself as a Cyborg. Her alienness clearly resonates with the genuine Aliens who in child form inhabit Farr's adaptation of John Wyndham's famous novel The Midwich Cuckoos (1957; rev 1958) for Television as The Midwich Cuckoos (2022 7 episodes).
Farr's absorption in Cinema and Television, though various, may be most successfully realized through his scriptwriting, including various screenplays for episodes of Spooks (2002-2011), the screenplay for Hanna (2011) directed by Joe Wright, or Outcasts (2011 8 episodes), and the Television Anthology Series Philip K Dick's Electric Dreams (2017-2018 10 episodes). His first novel, The Book of Stolen Dreams (2021), is a Young Adult quest tale whose two child protagonists travel through strange lands in search of their father, who has fallen victim to a Dystopian regime.
Farr should not be confused with the historian David Farr. [JC]
David Farr
born Guildford, Surrey: 29 October 1969
works
- The Book of Stolen Dreams (London: Usborne Publishing, 2021) [illus/hb/Kristina Kister]
plays (selected)
- The Nativity (London: Faber and Faber, 1999) [play: chap: first performed 22 December 1999 Young Vic, London: pb/]
- The Danny Crowe Show (London: Faber and Faber, 2001) [play: chap: first performed 10 October 2001 Bush Theatre, London: pb/]
- Night of the Soul (London: Faber and Faber, 2002) [play: chap: first performed 19 July 2002 The Pit, London: pb/]
- The Odyssey in Plays 1 (London: Faber and Faber, 2005) [play: chap: first performed 1 March 2006 Lyric Hammersmith, London: hb/]
- Metamorphosis (London: Oberon Books, 2006) [play: chap: first performed 20 September 2006 Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, London: pb/]
- The Ramayana (London: Faber and Faber, 2007) [play: chap: first performed 14 February 2007 Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, London: pb/]
- Water [play: first performed 28 September 2007 Wilde Theatre, Bracknell]
- The Heart of Robin Hood (London: Faber and Faber, 2011) [play: chap: first performed 18 November 2011 Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-Upon-Avon: see Franz Kafka: pb/]
- A Dead Body in Taos (London: Faber and Faber, 2022) [play: chap: first performed September 2022 Old Vic, Bristol: pb/]
links
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