Stuff Happens

Stuff Happens is a play by David Hare, written in response to the Iraq War. Hare describes it as "a history play" that deals with recent history.

The title is inspired by Donald Rumsfeld's response to widespread looting in Baghdad:

The play presents a mix of viewpoints, including arguments for and against the attack on Iraq, mixing verbatim re-creations of real speeches, meetings and press conferences and fictionalized versions of private meetings between members of the Bush and Blair administrations, and international figures such as Hans Blix and Dominique de Villepin.

An ensemble cast plays over 40 roles during the 3-hour play, although the actors playing the principals—Bush, Rice, Powell—play only one role.

David Hare’s Stuff Happens is a play about the events that led up to the 2003 Iraq War, beginning at about the time of George W. Bush's election in America in 2000. Parts of the dialogue are direct quotes from the characters' real-world counterparts. The author has stated that the dialogue is not “knowingly untrue” but he had to sometimes “use his imagination” to cover events that were not recorded verbatim, admitting that his play is not a documentary as such.

Stuff Happens had its world premiere at the Olivier Theatre at the National Theatre in London on 1 September 2004 and has subsequently been performed at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum (with Keith Carradine and Julian Sands) in June 2005 and at Sydney's Seymour Center (with Rhys Muldoon and Greg Stone) in July 2005. Greg Stone won a Helpmann for Best Male Actor in a Play in 2006.

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