The Master Builder

About David EdgarHenrik Ibsen

Born in Norway in 1828 Ibsen began his writing career with romantic history plays influenced by Shakespeare and Schiller. In 1851 he was appointed writer-in-residence at the newly established Norwegian Theatre in Bergen with a contract to write a play a year for five years following which he was made Artistic Director of the Norwegian Theatre in what is now Oslo. In the 1860s he moved abroad to concentrate wholly on writing. He began with two mighty verse dramas Brand and Peer Gynt and in the 1870s and 1880s wrote the sequence of realistic problem plays for which he is best known among them A Dolls House Ghosts An Enemy of the People Hedda Gabler and Rosmersholm. His last four plays The Master Builder Little Eyolf John Gabriel Borkman and When We Dead Awaken dating from his return to Norway in the 1890s are increasingly overlaid with symbolism. Illness forced him to retire in 1900 and he died in 1906 after a series of crippling strokes. David Edgar is a leading UK playwright author of many original plays and adaptations. He also pioneered the teaching of playwriting in the UK founding the Playwriting Studies course at Birmingham University in 1989. His plays include: The New Real (Royal Shakespeare Company / Headlong 2024); Here in America (Orange Tree Theatre 2024); Trying It On (UK tour 2018); A Christmas Carol adapted from the story by Charles Dickens (Royal Shakespeare Company 2017); If Only (Minerva Theatre Chichester 2013); Written on the Heart (RSC 2011); a version of Ibsen's The Master Builder (Minerva Theatre Chichester 2013); Arthur and George adapted from the novel by Julian Barnes (Birmingham Rep & Nottingham Playhouse 2010); Testing the Echo (Out of Joint 2008); A Time to Keep written with Stephanie Dale (Dorchester Community Players 2007); Playing With Fire (National Theatre 2005); Continental Divide (US 2003); The Prisoner's Dilemma (RSC 2001); Albert Speer based on Gitta Sereny's biography of Hitler's architect (National Theatre 2000); Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde (Birmingham Rep 1996); Pentecost (RSC 1994); The Shape of the Table (National Theatre 1990); Maydays (1983); The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (RSC 1980); Destiny (1976); and The National Interest (1971). His work for television includes adaptations of Destiny screened by the BBC in 1978 The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs televised by the BBC in 1981 and The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby televised by Channel 4 in 1982 as well as the plays Buying a Landslide (1992) and Vote for Them (1989). He is also the author of the radio plays Ecclesiastes (1977) A Movie Starring Me (1991) Talking to Mars (1996) and an adaptation of Eve Brook's novel The Secret Parts (2000). He wrote the screenplay for the film Lady Jane (1986). He is the author of How Plays Work (Nick Hern Books 2009; revised 2021) and The Second Time as Farce: Reflections on the Drama of Mean Times (1988) and editor of The State of Play: Playwrights on Playwriting (2000). He was Resident Playwright at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1974-5 (Board Member from 1985) Fellow in Creative Writing at Leeds Polytechnic Bicentennial Arts Fellow (US) (1978-9) and was Literary Consultant for the RSC (1984-8 Honorary Associate Artist 1989). He founded the University of Birmingham's MA in Playwriting Studies in 1989 and was its director until 1999. He was appointed Professor of Playwriting Studies in 1995.