{"id":1624,"date":"2018-10-15T13:45:48","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T13:45:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/?page_id=1624"},"modified":"2019-07-25T10:28:39","modified_gmt":"2019-07-25T10:28:39","slug":"mercer-david","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/?page_id=1624","title":{"rendered":"Mercer, David"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>David Mercer, born in 1928, was a prolific political playwright, best known for his work on television since the 1960s. From a working class background in Yorkshire, he graduated from Durham University. In the late 1950s, he moved in literary circles in London and met authors such as Rudolf Nassauer, Booker-prize winning novelist Bernice Rubens, and her husband Jon Silkin. He was a close friend of British-Jewish playwright <a href=\"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/?page_id=31\">Harold Pinter<\/a>. A self-confessed Marxist, his plays, such as <em>Where the Difference Begins<\/em> (1961), focus on the predicament of socialism in a capitalist post-war society. Aesthetically, Mercer moved between &#8216;kitchen-sink realism&#8217; and the emerging experiments of non-naturalist TV (<em>A Suitable Case for Treatment<\/em>, 1962). Under the influence of psychiatrist R.D. Laing, he tackled the subjects of schizophrenia and abortion in his documentary-style TV play <em>In Two Minds<\/em> (1967), which was later adapted as <em>Family Life<\/em> on film by director Ken Loach. He was the screenwriter for Alain Resnais&#8217; Cesar-Award-winning film <em>Providence<\/em> (1977). He moved to Haifa, Israel, and died in 1980.<\/p>\n<p>Plays<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\"><span style=\"font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">&#8212;. <i>Collected TV Plays: Volume 1: Where the Difference Begins; A Climate of Fear; Birth of a Private Man.<\/i> London: Calder, 1981.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\"><span style=\"font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">&#8212;. <i>Collected TV Plays: Volume 2: A Suitable Case for Treatment; For Tea on Sunday; And Did Those Feet; Let&#8217;s Murder Vivaldi; In Two Minds; The Parachute<\/i>. London: Calder, 1981.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\"><span style=\"font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: small;\">&#8212;.\u00a0<em>Plays 1:<\/em>\u00a0<em>Where the Difference Begins; A Suitable Case for Treatment; The Governor&#8217;s Lady, On the Eve of Publication; The Cellar and the Almond Tree; Emma&#8217;s Time; After Haggerty<\/em><em>.<\/em> London: Methuen, 1990.<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\"><span style=\"font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: small;\">&#8212;. <\/span><i style=\"font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: small;\">Plays 2: Flint; The Bankrupt; An Afternoon at the Festival; Duck Song; The Arcata Promise; Find Me;\u00a0<\/i><span style=\"font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: small;\"><i>Huggy Bear<\/i><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: small;\">. London: Methuen, 1994.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Mercer, born in 1928, was a prolific political playwright, best known for his work on television since the 1960s. From a working class background in Yorkshire, he graduated from Durham University. In the late 1950s, he moved in literary circles in London and met authors such as Rudolf Nassauer, Booker-prize winning novelist Bernice Rubens, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":565,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1624","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1624"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2839,"href":"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1624\/revisions\/2839"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishjewishtheatre.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}