Stuff Happens

"Stuff happens . . . And it's untidy, and freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things."

The famous response of Donald Rumsfeld, American Secretary of Defense, to the looting of Baghdad, at a press conference on April 11, 2003, provides the title for a new play, specially written for the Olivier Theatre, about the extraordinary process leading up to the invasion of Iraq.

How does the world settle its differences, now there is only one superpower? What happened to leaders risking their creditability with sceptical publics? Using direct quotes meticulously culled from interviews and public appearances, combined with the playwright's nuanced reimagining of what went on behind closed doors, Hare has fashioned a historical narrative and human drama that presents the Iraqi conflict in all of its haphazard notoriety.

Stuff Happens premiered at the National Theatre London, in September 2004.