David William Halliwell (31 July 1936, Brighouse, Yorkshire – c.16 March 2006, Charlbury, Oxfordshire)Alan Strachan & Janet Street Porte

''The Independent'', 5 April 2006 was a British dramatist.

Early life

Halliwell attended Huddersfield College of Art (1953–59) as an art student, but was expelled for a time from the institution, and later switched to acting at

RADA The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA; ) is a drama school in London, England, that provides vocational conservatoire training for theatre, film, television, and radio. It is based in the Bloomsbury area of Central London, close to the S ...

. It was there that Halliwell first met

Mike Leigh Mike Leigh (born 20 February 1943) is an English film and theatre director, screenwriter and playwright. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and further at the Camberwell School of Art, the Central School of Art and Des ...

. According to Leigh, the other students "were mostly posh kids and it was terribly old-fashioned and twee, not like it is now, but there was a scruff element.

John Hurt Sir John Vincent Hurt (22 January 1940 – 25 January 2017) was an English actor whose career spanned over five decades. Hurt was regarded as one of Britain's finest actors. Director David Lynch described him as "simply the greatest actor in t ...

was there, David Warner was there. Me, Halliwell,

Ken Campbell Kenneth Victor Campbell (10 December 1941 – 31 August 2008) was an English actor, writer and director known for his work in experimental theatre. He has been called "a one-man dynamo of British theatre". Campbell achieved notoriety in the ...

and a few other renegades." In the early 1960s he worked as an actor in rep and was a stage manager at the

Nottingham Playhouse Nottingham Playhouse is a theatre in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England. It was first established as a repertory theatre in 1948 when it operated from a former cinema in Goldsmith Street. Directors during this period included Val May and F ...

for a time.Obituary: David Halliwell
''The Times'', 21 March 2006

''Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs''

His experiences at the Huddersfield College were the basis for his earliest produced and best remembered play, ''Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs''. In this play Malcolm Scrawdyke, a Hitlerite figure, plots revenge against authority for his college expulsion by forming the Party of Dynamic Erection with his three acolytes. "The Nazis made a big impression on people of my age", Halliwell recalled. "They almost destroyed Europe. But as well as being pretty threatening they were also seen as a laughing stock even during the war." The play won Halliwell the ''Evening Standard'''s Most Promising Playwright Award in 1967. ''Malcolm'''s premier production at the Unity Theatre in 1965 was directed by Mike Leigh with Halliwell himself in the central role of Malcolm.Michael Billington & Mike Leig
Obituary: David Halliwell
''The Guardian'', 22 March 2006 Lasting six hours in this version, the production's run was short. Taken up by West End producer

Michael Codron Sir Michael Victor Codron (born 8 June 1930) is a British theatre producer, known for his productions of the early work of Harold Pinter, Christopher Hampton, David Hare, Simon Gray and Tom Stoppard. He has been honoured with a Laurence Olivi ...

, reduced to a more manageable length,

now featured as the character in a West End production and on Broadway (both were short runs) where the play was retitled ''Hail Scrawdyke!'' A feature film version followed, ''

Little Malcolm ''Little Malcolm'' is a 1974 British comedy drama film directed by Stuart Cooper. It was entered into the 24th Berlin International Film Festival where it won the Silver Bear. The film is based on the stage play '' Little Malcolm and His Strug ...

'' (1974), again with Hurt in the lead. A successful revival in 1999 starred

Ewan McGregor Ewan Gordon McGregor ( ; born 31 March 1971) is a Scottish actor. His accolades include a Golden Globe Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and the BAFTA Britannia Humanitarian Award. In 2013, he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British ...

Later work

In 1968 Halliwell jointly set up a company named Quipu (an

Inca The Inca Empire (also known as the Incan Empire and the Inka Empire), called ''Tawantinsuyu'' by its subjects, ( Quechua for the "Realm of the Four Parts", "four parts together" ) was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The adm ...

communication tool) which performed at various London theatres until 1973. Its stated aim reflected the radical politics of the time: "a new kind of organisation in which the means of production are owned, controlled and developed by the artists whose work is being produced". Quipu, "the first lunchtime theatre club in London", allowed the tryout of short plays. It was a form of "devised theatre" which Mike Leigh, recalling Halliwell in 2015, thought his friend's personality was incompatible: "His relationship with the actors wasn’t about growing and enabling, but about dictating, so the plays were always somewhat inorganic. The writer was there, though. He had great ideas – perceptive to the highest degree and witty, too." Halliwell's later stage plays include ''Who's Who of Flapland'' (1967) and ''K.D. Dufford'' (1969).Dan Rebellato "Halliwell, David /nowiki>William/nowiki>", in Colin Chambers ''The Continuum Companion to Twentieth Century Theatre'', London: Continuum, 2002

005 ''005'' is a 1981 arcade game by Sega. They advertised it as the first of their RasterScan Convert-a-Game series, designed so that it could be changed into another game in minutes "at a substantial savings". It is one of the first examples of a ...

p.338 Halliwell researched the professional relationship of

Maurice Wilkins Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins (15 December 1916 – 5 October 2004) was a New Zealand-born British biophysicist and Nobel laureate whose research spanned multiple areas of physics and biophysics, contributing to the scientific understanding ...

and

Rosalind Franklin Rosalind Elsie Franklin (25 July 192016 April 1958) was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, ...

, both involved in the discovery of DNA, in the 1980s,DNA
King's College, London but his work was not completed, although the recordings of people he interviewed have been preserved. He contributed several television scripts to several of the BBC's anthology series, including ''

Play for Today ''Play for Today'' is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage ...

'', and wrote ( an unproduced serial) for ''

Doctor Who ''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series depicts the adventures of a Time Lord called the Doctor, an extraterrestrial being who appears to be human. The Doctor explores the ...

''.

References

External links

*
David Halliwell
at the Doollee.com – The Playwrights website

/nowiki>)"], Film Reference website
David Halliwell correspondence
at Senate House Library, University of London {{DEFAULTSORT:Halliwell, David 1936 births 2006 deaths 20th-century British dramatists and playwrights Alumni of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art British male dramatists and playwrights 20th-century British male writers