The Experimental Plays Of Harold Pinter

Scolnicov highlights Harold Pinter as an experimental playwright who attempted to free the theatre from the legacy of realism, causality, and motivation.

First published in 1977, the third edition of Pinter is an excellent analysis of Harold Pinter and his works. Written when Pinter was only a few plays old, the book draws on several sources, including interviews with Pinter himself, to comment on Pinter’s career, his aesthetic and philosophical choices, and his oeuvre as a writer. The section devoted to his individual plays has been arranged in a chronological manner to visually represent the growth of the playwright and the relationship shared between his early and later works. Esslin, known for coining the term ‘theatre of the absurd,’ was himself an inspiration to Pinter and hence, the book records an intellectual and creative exchange between the author and his subject. The book will be of interest to students of literature, drama, history as well as to an academically inclined theatre audience.

The book discusses the political dramas of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard regarding their employment of the two critical terms used in its title. It provides a new look at the output of the artists in reference to the employment of the grotesque, justifying their classification together with the East European absurdist playwri...

This collection of essays focuses on one of Harold Pinter’s most popular and challenging plays, The Dumb Waiter, while addressing also a range of significant issues current in Pinter studies and which are applicable beyond this play. The interesting and provocative dialogues between established and emerging scholars featured here provide close readings of The Dumb Waiter, within relevant cultural and historical contexts and from a range of theoretical perspectives. The essays range over issues of autobiography and theater, genre studies, and the impact of Pinter’s political activism on his dramatic production, among others. The collection is also concerned with the meaning of the play when assessed against other example’s of Pinter’s work, both dramatic and non-dramatic writing. Each contributor shows a gift for presenting a complex argument in an accessible style, making this book an important resource for a wide range of readers, from undergraduates to postgraduates and specialist researchers. The collection offers essays that approach The Dumb Waiter, from an interdisciplinary perspective and as both a literary and dramatic text. Thus, the book should be of equal significance to those encountering Pinter within the context of English Studies, drama, and performance.

Why were Harold Pinter’s plays met with so much disdain in the early years, when he has since been acknowledged as one of the greatest British dramatists of the twentieth century? In this study, Binnie Brand Yeates examines and compellingly demonstrates, through Pinter’s striking theatrical skills and the behaviour, motivation and language of the characters in the plays written between 1957 and 1964, the probable cause of the alienation, and leaves no doubt that, though controversial, Pinter has in fact always been an extremely powerful and accomplished playwright. One of the first commentaries ever written on Pinter’s plays, now with a 2013 Postscript covering 'The Hothouse' and selected plays written between 1978 and 1991, this is an original, thought-provoking and eye-opening interpretation, an essential reader for students, theatre lovers and Pinter devotees alike. “What Binnie Yeates offers here is not just another set of thoughts on Pinter's early plays, but one that captures a snapshot of the growth of his reputation in the mid-sixties. Based upon a dissertation that Binnie wrote in 1966, she effectively summarises the first key phase of Pinter’s writing up to and including the career-defining 'The Homecoming'. With little dedicated Pinter scholarship available at the time of the original study, Yeates considered Pinter free from too much critical noise on her subject, and did so predominantly through considering character and motivation. She offers thoughts on Pinter's signatures of menace, status and game-playing, and how his work affected audience through specific uses of language and the impact of disorientation. The work captures an admiration for the playwright in a passionately articulated defence and appreciation of his plays, and reminds us of a time when his reputation was still being defined.” Dr Mark Taylor-Batty Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies, University of Leeds; Executive, International Harold Pinter Society

"The study offers an interdisciplinary analysis of Harold Pinter's dramatic discourse and focuses on the way power makes the characters play on the borders of linguistic, spatial, narrative and gender configurations. It examines the experimental nature of Harold Pinter's dramatic technique and how he compromises both the realistic and the absurd dramatic formulae. The study also investigates the narrative of the past - a new dramatic technique in Pinter's Plays, which brings into focus the inner life of the characters without causing any severe disturbance to the realistic conventional formula. It asserts that the narratives of the past become a form of doing, of being anchored in life and of acting in response to it. It also argues that sexuality is constantly submitted to manipulation and that women are more prepared than men to transgress gender constructions"--

This important book offers a thematic collection of critical essays, ideal for undergraduate courses on modern British theatre, on Harold Pinter's theatrical works, alongside new interviews with contemporary theatre practitioners. The life and works of Harold Pinter (1930–2008), a pivotal figure in British theatre, have been widely discussed, debated and celebrated internationally. For over five decades, Pinter's work traversed and redefined various forms and genres, constantly in dialogue with, and often impacting the work of, other writers, artists and activists. Combining a reconsideration of key Pinter scholarship with new contexts, voices and theoretical approaches, this book opens up fresh insights into the author's work, politics, collaborations and his enduring status as one of the world's foremost dramatists. Three sections re-contextualize Pinter as a cultural figure; explore and interrogate his influence on contemporary British playwriting; and offer a series of original interviews with theatre-makers engaging in the staging of Pinter's work today. Reconsiderations of Pinter's relationship to literary and theatrical movements such as Modernism and the Theatre of the Absurd; interrogations of the role of class, elitism and religious and cultural identity sit alongside chapters on Pinter's personal politics, specifically in relation to the Middle East.

The Cambridge Companion to Harold Pinter provides an introduction to one of the world's leading and most controversial writers, whose output in many genres and roles continued to grow until the author's death in 2008. Harold Pinter, winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature, produced work for the theatre, radio, television and screen, in addition to being a highly successful director and actor. This volume examines the wide range of Pinter's work (including his recent play Celebration). The first section of essays places his writing within the critical and theatrical context of his time, and its reception worldwide. The Companion moves on to explore issues of performance, with essays by practitioners and writers. The third section addresses wider themes, including Pinter as celebrity, the playwright and his critics, and the political dimensions of his work. The volume offers photographs from key productions, a chronology, checklist of works and bibliography.