HAROLD PINTER (1930 – 2008)

He was born in London.
He attended the Drama School where he played Macbeth in a school play.
In 1948 he started attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art but the following year he dropped out.
In 1951 he attended the Central School of Speech and Drama.
He also wrote novels and poems.
He married twice, first an actress and then a writer.
His first play was The Room in 1957 (rejected because obscure) at the University of Bristol and The Birthday Party followed in 1958. It was first performed in Cambridge at the Arts Theatre.
He also wrote screenplays based on novels such as Marcel Proust’s A la Recherche du Monde Perdu.
He wrote more than 30 plays.
In 2005 he received the Nobel Prize.
He kept acting; his last role was in 2006.
He died from cancer in 2008.
He uses some of Becket’s devices such as the characters. His early plays were identified with the Theatre of the Absurd. Pinter was more interested in silences, which are more naturalistic and because they communicate a secondary level of meaning. Becket was more universal.
Initially he avoided political reference, but then he became more politically engaged.
Pinter’s aim was not that to change the world of the theatre.