Onič, Tomaž - Pinter, Harold-Harold Pinter On International Stages-Peter Lang GMBH, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften (2014)

Tomaž Onič (ed.
)
Tomaž Onič (ed.)
Tomaž Onič (ed.)
Harold Pinter on International Stages

Harold Pinter on

Harold Pinter is inarguably one of the as well as political activism seem fully
International Stages
most influential modern British drama- applicable. They are balanced by selected
tists. The horizon of his literary, cultural Western perspectives, including Italian,
and political activity stretches far beyond British and American ones.
the borders of his homeland, as well as
beyond the theatrical and literary world.
The essays in this volume deal with the The Editor
reception of his literary (and political) Tomaž Onič is an Assistant Professor of
heritage in several European and non-Eu- Literature in the Department of English
ropean Countries, offering previously un- Studies at the University of Maribor (Slo-
published research. They bring together a venia). His research interests and teaching
variety of aspects focusing on Pinter in the experience include contemporary British
former region of Eastern Europe like Hun- and American drama in close connection
gary, Poland, Turkey, Croatia, Macedonia with translation and cultural studies as
and Slovenia, where his literary ideas well as literary stylistics.
ISBN 978-3-631-65202-2
Tomaž Onič (ed.)
Tomaž Onič (ed.)
Tomaž Onič (ed.)

Harold Pinter on

Harold Pinter is inarguably one of the as well as political activism seem fully
International Stages
most influential modern British drama- applicable. They are balanced by selected
tists. The horizon of his literary, cultural Western perspectives, including Italian,
and political activity stretches far beyond British and American ones.
the borders of his homeland, as well as
beyond the theatrical and literary world.
The essays in this volume deal with the The Editor
reception of his literary (and political) Tomaž Onič is an Assistant Professor of
heritage in several European and non-Eu- Literature in the Department of English
ropean Countries, offering previously un- Studies at the University of Maribor (Slo-
published research. They bring together a venia). His research interests and teaching
variety of aspects focusing on Pinter in the experience include contemporary British
former region of Eastern Europe like Hun- and American drama in close connection
gary, Poland, Turkey, Croatia, Macedonia with translation and cultural studies as
and Slovenia, where his literary ideas well as literary stylistics.
Tomaž Onič (ed.)
Harold Pinter
on International Stages
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Cover image: ©Silvo Salčnik – Sax
ISBN 978-3-631-65202-2 (Print)

E-ISBN 978-3-653-04656-4 (E-Book)
DOI 10.3726/ 978-3-653-04656-4
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Contents
Acknowledgements��7
Preface��9
Pinter in the UK��15
Mark Taylor-Batty
The Company of Men: Pinter’s Gendered Conflicts��17
Pinter in Italy��29
Nick Ceramella
‘Silence Symphony’ Conducted by Pinter and Eduardo, Two
World Theatre Maestri��31
Pia Vittoria Colombo

The Italian Anatomy of Pinter: With their Pinter’s Anatomy,
Italian Contemporary Playwrights ricci/forte Pay Their Dues
to the British Nobel Laureate��53
Eve Marine Dauvergne

An International Approach to A Slight Ache��67
Pinter Further East......................................................................................................75
Tomaž Onič
Early Productions of Pinter on the Slovene Stage..............................................77
Acija Alfirević
Harold Pinter’s Reception in Croatia...................................................................89
Benjamin Keatinge
Pinter in Macedonia: Productions, Translations
and Critical Reception........................................................................................ 103
6 Contents
Andrea P. Balogh
Harold Pinter’s Authorial Image: Negotiating between
the West and Hungary�� 119
Anna Suwalska-Kołecka
Rediscovering Pinter – a few comments on the most recent
Polish productions of Pinter’s plays�� 141
Nursen Gömceli
Harold Pinter’s ‘Room’ on Turkish Stages: a ‘Dilemma’
Between Art and Politics?�� 153
Pinter across the Atlantic�� 167
Susan Hollis Merritt

Being and Not Being Harold Pinter: Pinter Still in Play in the USA�� 169
Index�� 205
Acknowledgements
The editor wishes to thank the authors of individual chapters for their enthu-
siastic response to the invitation for papers, and for sharing with the readers of
this monograph their original contributions regarding Pinter’s literary and non-
literary heritage in their own countries. Their insights into different aspects of
Pinter studies offer a rich variety of previously unpublished research.
I would also like to thank the reviewers of these research papers for their valu-
able suggestions and their time invested in the reviewing process.
Last but not least, I thank my dear professor, mentor, colleague and friend
Darja Hribar, who is unfortunately no longer with us. Were it not for her, who
directed and guided me in my choice of research field, my scholarly and conse-
quently editing activities like this one would very likely be in a different area of
literature.
Preface
Harold Pinter belongs among the most prominent and influential intel-
lectuals of the twentieth century and left an important imprint in the field of
British and international literature, as well as on the political and social scene at
an international level. His career began with poetry writing in the early 1950s
and continued through playwriting, writing for the screen, acting, directing
and actively participating in political activism. For his endeavours and literary
achievements, he was awarded many literary and non-literary prizes. Among
the prominent ones are the Order of the British Empire, CBE (1966); the Euro-
pean Prize for Literature, Vienna (1973); The David Cohen British Literature
Prize (1995); the Companion of Honour for services to Literature, (2002); the
Wilfred Owen Poetry Prize (2005); the Nobel Prize for Literature (2005); the Eu-
ropean Theatre Prize (2006) and the Legion d’Honneur (2007). He has also been
awarded honorary degrees from several British as well as foreign universities.
Pinter’s plays have been and continue to be translated into numerous world
languages in order to be published or performed in professional and amateur
theatres. The extent of his literary, cultural and political impact has thus stretched
far beyond the borders of his homeland and has received a variety of responses
depending on many factors, like the time and place of productions or transla-
tions, the political regime at the time and place of production, as well as par-
ticular directing approaches. The purpose of this monograph is to look into the
reception of Pinter’s works in various regions, in most cases countries, at various
times since the early sixties, when Pinter’s plays began to be performed on the
UK and international stages. Each of the eleven chapters focuses on a particular
aspect of Pinter’s reception, starting in Pinter’s homeland, then moving abroad.
Individual authors adopt specific approaches that serve the purposes of their
research; in some cases, the reader is offered a general overview of national pro-
ductions and locally published critical reviews; some chapters include audience
response and commentaries from directors, actors and other theatre practition-
ers, while some focus on particular non-traditional productions or adaptations.
All, however, provide the reader with expected as well as surprising research
results that offer a broad and in several cases original insight into performing
Pinter in foreign countries and cultures.
10 Preface
The arrangement of chapters follows a geographical order, starting with the

UK, then moving outwards: first to Italy, then to several former Eastern Bloc
countries, and finally across the Atlantic, although the last chapter remains
tightly linked to the old world in its focus on the productions of a Belarus theatre
group in the US. The distribution of chapters according to location was chosen
to provide the reader with a clear overview and logical arrangement of content.
An index of last names, titles of plays and various other terms and concepts ap-
pears at the end of the monograph to help the reader navigate the content more
easily and simplify the search for specific details across the chapters.
***
Pinter first acquired importance in the UK in the early 1960s, equally through
his writing for television, radio and cinema as through critical appreciation for
his smaller output for the theatre. In Chapter One, Mark Taylor-Batty explores
some characteristics of Pinter’s early writing concerning gender issues: relation-
ships between genders, the discourses of their representation, and the reliance
on narrative mechanisms to achieve interpersonal control. The research present-
ed in the opening chapter of this monograph shows how Pinter foregrounds or
critiques some discourses of gender construction, as a means to appreciate this
period of his writing, and its importance to the greater canon of his work.
In the following three chapters, the focus on the reception and analysis of
Pinter’s works moves from the UK to Italy. Nick Ceramella investigates Pinter’s
characteristic dramatic technique of silence, while simultaneously drawing
a parallel to the plays of Eduardo De Filippo, an Italian master of writing for
the stage, who – as pointed out by Ceramella – perfected the same technique.
Ceramella, who called this chapter ‘Silence Symphony’, extends the connection
of Pinter’s theatre to the Italian cultural space by drawing attention to the re-
semblance between Pinter and Pirandello, which shows in the theme of fear that
enters the room from outside, and, most importantly, in their unsurpassed use of
silence and people’s real use of language, the key to understanding their dramatic
worlds. The similarities drawn between these playwrights offer a possible expla-
nation for Pinter’s relatively positive acceptance by the Italian audience.
In Chapter Three, Pia Vittoria Colombo reports on her research into a con-
temporary theatre project implemented by the Italian theatre artists ricci/forte,
titled Pinter’s Anatomy. The controversial Italian duo is famous for its postmod-
ern reshaping of canonical dramatic literature which is often characterized by a
specific and almost shocking playwriting style. The Pinter scholar Roberto Can-
ziani invited ricci/forte to produce a theatre project that would retain a recogniz-
able degree of the typical Pinter style and simultaneously to add an original ricci/
Preface 11
forte touch. Pinter’s Anatomy was as much a success as a controversy; however, it

offered a unique interpretation of Pinter and thus established the conditions for
an original reading of this famous playwright in Italy. In her research, Colombo
looks into the means of functioning of this hybrid performance, while evaluating
the contribution of ricci/forte to the reception of Pinter in Italy.
In the last chapter dealing with the varied reception of Pinter in Italy, Eve
Marine Dauvergne presents a secondary school project in which she uses Pinter’s
A Slight Ache in a creative writing course. Later she indicates the connection
between this project and an interview Pinter agreed to give her in 1993 when
she was a graduate student in London. The final part of the chapter includes the
full text of this previously unpublished interview and thus constitutes a valuable
addition to our finite archive of Pinter’s words.
Pinter’s works crossed the Iron Curtain relatively soon after their premieres
in the West. Chapters Five to Seven deal with the reception of Pinter’s works in
cultural spaces of three republics of the former Yugoslavia. Although this mul-
tinational federation was a political union, there were considerable historical
and cultural differences among its formal components. Therefore, it is natural to
expect differences as well as similarities in the reception of contemporary litera-
ture. As T. Onič reports, in Slovene theatres Pinter’s plays have never ceased to be
staged since the first productions in the late 1960s to the present day; moreover,
the number of new productions has increased from one every three to five years
in the 1970s and 80s to one or more per year in the 2000s. This research focuses
on the early productions of Pinter’s plays in Slovenia, provides historical and
cultural background, as well as relevant critical reviews, all of which help to con-
textualize the performances and the response to them. Slovene reviews are com-
plemented with international, particularly British ones, since parallel research
provides a more grounded insight into the choices and decisions concerning the
productions in Slovene theatres. Pinter came to Croatia in the mid-sixties, which
is slightly sooner than in Slovenia; this was when The Collection and The Lover
were premiered as a double bill in the Croatian capital of Zagreb. Acija Alfirević
provides an overview of the main Croatian productions of Pinter from the be-
ginnings to the present day, a selection of critical reviews of these productions, as
well as commentary on both. Benjamin Keatinge investigates the production and
translation history of Pinter’s work in Macedonia, with reference to reviews and
articles on Pinter in Macedonian journals mainly during the 1990s and 2000s.
The analysis and citations are offered in English through the translation of ar-
ticles originally published in Macedonian, which makes them more accessible
to and interesting for the international reader. The research considers the ex-
tant Macedonian scholarship on Pinter as well as interviews with academics and
12 Preface
writers involved in the dissemination of Pinter’s work in Macedonia. References

to scholarly work on Pinter’s reception in the former Soviet Union provide an il-
luminating parallel with developments in the Balkans. Keatinge also explores to
what extent Pinter features in the university curriculum in Macedonia and sug-
gests ways in which his work might be approached in the Macedonian classroom.
After the Yugoslav section, the spotlight moves further East. Andrea P. Balogh
traces the shaping and changing of Harold Pinter’s authorial image between
the West and Hungary. She starts by mapping the cultural logic of Soviet-style
authoritarianism and the politics of translation informing the Hungarian con-
struction of Pinter’s authorial identity in the reviews introducing Pinter to the
Hungarian public sphere. She continues by examining the ways in which the
officially sanctioned Marxist-Leninist worldview affected Hungarian critical in-
terpretations of Pinter’s works. Balogh studies the contradictory politics of inter-
pretation of Pinter’s works that linked the officially repudiated concept of absurd
drama and the officially propagated notion of realism together in legitimizing
the Hungarian critical interest in Pinter’s authorship in the 1960s. A specific
interaction between the post-war British Marxist redefinitions of social realist
drama and the Marxist-Leninist official notion of socialist realism is an original
proposition by Balogh, who with this concept points out the differences between
English and Hungarian notions of Pinter’s realism. She also addresses the issue
of political censorship in literature and literary theory and concludes the study
by creating a link between certain aspects of 1960s and 1980s reception of Pinter
in Hungary.
In Poland, Pinter’s popularity reached its peak in the 1960s and 70s, when
his plays were directed by the most distinguished Polish directors. Then interest
in his plays slowly waned and finally faded to fewer than 10 productions of his
plays in total between the fall of Communism in 1989 and Pinter’s Nobel Prize in
2005. For obvious reasons, the Nobel Prize brought Pinter back from oblivion on
the Polish stage. In Chapter Nine, Anna Suwalska-Kołecka looks into this recent
rediscovery of Pinter in Polish theatres and comments on the most notable post-
2005 Polish productions of his plays. She comments on how Pinter has been
understood, or occasionally misunderstood in Poland.
In the following chapter, Nursen Gömceli opens and discusses a ‘dilemma’
between art and politics concerning Harold Pinter and his plays on Turkish stages.
Since his first encounter with Turkish audiences in 1960 with The Caretaker, several
of Pinter’s plays have been performed on Turkish stages; however, although Pinter
has been valued by Turkish intellectuals in the theatre and in the academy for his
dramatic art as one of the leading representatives of absurd drama and the ‘come-
dy of menace’ tradition, he has found little support among Turkish theatregoers as
Preface 13
a dramatist. Gömceli discusses the reasons for Pinter’s mixed reception by Turkish
audiences, with special emphasis on two of his explicitly political plays, One for
the Road and Mountain Language, which were produced after his visit to Turkey
in 1985 on behalf of International PEN.
In the concluding chapter, Susan Hollis Merritt bridges and merges East and
West by providing a thorough account of the Belarus Free Theatre’s US debut of
their successful theatre project Being Harold Pinter. Productions of Being Harold
Pinter in the United States and elsewhere demonstrate Pinter’s reach and influ-
ence since his winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005. Merritt titled the
chapter “Being and Not Being Harold Pinter: Pinter Still in Play in the USA”,
which – as she explains – takes account of Harold Pinter’s death in 2008, but at
the same time serves as a strategy for keeping him “alive” through production
and critical discourse about his life and work. Since his death, the global impor-
tance of “being and not being” Harold Pinter has grown as a result of his Nobel
Lecture and memorial events, tributes, and festivals celebrating his life and work.
As brought to the reader’s attention in this overview and introduction, Harold
Pinter’s literary heritage in non-British contexts is extremely rich and possesses
considerable potential in a variety of senses. Pinter’s plays – when hosted in for-
eign cultural spaces – often acquire multiple lives of their own, which starts with
adaptations or translations into foreign languages, and continues through pro-
ductions, interpretations and critical as well as popular reception. Such initiative
and activity multiplies divergent readings of Pinter and opens a broad range of
possible perspectives. Some original ones are offered in this monograph, which
the editor anticipates will contribute its share to international Pinter studies out-
side the British context, i.e. to research into Pinter on international stages.
Tomaž Onič
Maribor
May 2014
Pinter in the UK
Mark Taylor-Batty
Chapter One
The Company of Men: Pinter’s
Gendered Conflicts1
Harold Pinter became a playwright almost by accident, rather than by con-

scious design, when he agreed in 1957 to see if he could write a play for his friend
Henry Woolf, who was then studying at the University of Bristol. The Room,
based upon the experience of meeting Quentin Crisp at a party, was the result
of this, and it was quickly followed by the writing of both The Dumb Waiter and
The Birthday Party in the same year. The Birthday Party was subsequently to be
the first professional production of a Pinter play and, as is commonly known, the
1958 London production was halted after just eight performances and a collec-
tion of damning reviews. The Dumb Waiter was not then staged until 1959, and
first in Germany, with its London debut in March 1960, shortly after The Room
had received its first professional production in January. As is evident, Pinter was
certainly not an overnight success as a playwright on the London stage, and he
continued to work regularly as an actor (under the stage name of David Baron)
until 1960 as a key source of income. Writing for the theatre, at this point, did
not seem altogether likely to provide a livelihood. He was thrown something of
a creative lifeline by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the shape of some
commissions to write radio material, and the impoverished author wrote A Slight
Ache in the summer of 1958 (broadcast on 29 July 1959) and A Night Out in 1959
(broadcast on 1 March 1960). The Birthday Party then proved to be a huge suc-
cess in a television adaptation for Associated Rediffusion on 22 March 1960, as
part of the successful ‘Play of the Week’ series, and A Night Out was subsequent-
ly broadcast on television as part of ABC’s ‘Armchair Theatre’ on 24 April that
year. Financially, it was these commissions for TV and Radio that helped to keep
bread on the Pinter household table in 1958-1960, alongside his and his wife’s
income as actors. If he was beginning to make a career from writing, it was still a
long way from assured in the theatre, and it would not be until the success of The
Caretaker in 1960 that Pinter’s merits as a playwright became fully recognised.
1 Parts of this essay formed the basis of an extended study on gender in early Pinter in my
monograph The Theatre of Harold Pinter, London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2014.
18 Mark Taylor-Batty
Given his early exposure as a writer for the broadcast media, it is perhaps not
surprising that the dramas that Pinter wrote between his two most successful
stage plays of the 1960s – The Caretaker (1960) and The Homecoming (1965) –
were all written, originally, for media other than the theatre. Together this output
beyond the theatre represented nearly four fifths of his original creative writ-
ing during that period. Night School (1960), The Collection (1961), The Lover
(1963) and Tea Party (1965) were all written for television, The Dwarfs was first
adapted from unpublished prose material for radio (1960), and the screenplays
to two films were also completed during this period; The Servant (1963) and
The Pumpkin Eater (1964), with the Accident screenplay (1966) being completed
the year after the stage debut of The Homecoming. In fact, Pinter’s subsequent
career as a screenplay writer is not insignificant: few writers of film scripts
can boast a three-volume edition of their work, and a catalogue of twenty-six
screenplays (though not all filmed) is no bad portfolio on its own merit. Add to
this achievement that series of original plays written specifically for television in
the 1960s, and we have a substantial body of work written by Pinter for the small
or large screen. The television plays from the early 1960s, then, alongside the
screenplays he was writing, are crucial to our understanding of Pinter’s artistic
formation, but his sustained global success as a playwright has now so eclipsed
these and other aspects of his artistic activity that they are often either consid-
ered wrongly as peripheral to his central achievements, or even approached and
discussed straightforwardly as stage dramas.
Examining some elements of this body of work for the screen, we are able to
detect certain thematic strands that reinforce and engage interestingly with the
material of his playwriting that we are more commonly drawn to examine. In
particular, the community of men, and the codes of behaviour between men,
form a theme that draws specific attention and that is best considered in tandem
with his representation of women, sexuality, and the negotiation of relationships.
Notably, the television plays have an almost focussed concentration on sexual
relationships, on issues of gender representation, and the negotiations between
established or potential couples in seeking (and failing to achieve) harmony or
resolution from the conflicts that arise as a result of the performance of gender,
and the inevitable personal challenges that arise from such performances.
Pinter’s screenplays for The Servant, The Pumpkin Eater, and later for Accident
were also important opportunities for him to explore the landscape of male/
female and male/male interaction, and there must have been some profitable
creative to-and-fro between his adaptations for the screen of others’ work and his
own original writings for stage and television. The screenplay of The Pumpkin
Eater, based on the recently published semi-autobiographical novel by Penelope
The Company of Men: Pinter’s Gendered Conflicts 19
Mortimer, offers a case in point. In fact, the manner in which the film was pro-
moted in itself raises an issue of gender representation that is in dialogue with
Pinter’s achievement. In the original cinematic trailer for the film in the USA,
a narrator’s voice describes Anne Bancroft’s character Jo as a woman ‘trapped
by a sensuality that she can neither control nor confess’ (Clayton, 1:39). It is
an interesting description of that character from our twenty-first-century per-
spective, and it gives us an insight into a set of assumptions about gender in
the early 1960s. Any publicity needs, of course, to speak directly to its target
audience and, if it is to achieve its objective of maximising sales, it has to speak
the same cultural language as its audience, and such articulation might often
need to be divorced from more liberal or progressive discourses that inform the
same culture. The film trailer here might be read in this way, given that such
publicity might be perceived to be in strong tension with the ambitions of the
film in addressing the lead character’s predicament. Jo is here represented as
the victim of her own passions, as unable to rein in her desires, and unable or
unwilling to articulate them. In other words, she is represented in relation to the
cultural archetype of a housewife who might demurely suppress her sexuality
and promote her worth through the execution of her domestic duties. Such an
archetype, when actualised in cultural behaviour between the genders, imposes
conflicting demands upon women. It also creates a false dualism in understand-
ings of femininity between a woman’s sensual existence and a domestic or pro-
fessional existence. Pinter’s film script addressed these conflicts, and provided
for an opening up of an awareness of Jo’s domestic condition, defined and con-
tained by an overtly masculinist world-view that defined her in relation to her
children and her home. The writing of the screenplay in 1963 for The Pumpkin
Eater, then, certainly must have represented for Pinter a creative experience that
stimulated in him a series of reflections about marriage and sexuality that he had
begun to process in his recent television works since The Caretaker.
In the works discussed here, Pinter has clearly employed contradictory mas-
culine perceptions of women as fertile soil for his dramas. His work for the small
screen at this time (the television plays A Night Out, Night School, The Lover,
The Collection and Tea Party) all dealt with issues pertaining to the negotiation
of male/female relationships, and these television dramas were the terrain with-
in which Pinter began an extended exploration of sexual relationships within
dramatic frameworks. Some might argue that the early television plays in the
‘Armchair Theatre’ format simply represented televised adaptations of dramas
conceived theatrically, but the evidence really obviates such a perspective, and
it is clear that Pinter sought to make full use of the visual potential of the me-
dium to address these gender themes. Take, for example, the representation of
the character of Sally in Night School (1960). The television audience’s first visual
impression of her is of her naked legs, casually flipping off her shoes.
Interior. Sally’s bedroom. Evening. Sally’s legs. She sits, kicks off her shoes, picks up a
small pile of exercise books, puts them on her knee and starts making corrections. We
do not see her face. (Pinter 1981, 208)
In an early draft of the script (then entitled My Nephew) Pinter has this cuta-
way show Sally (from the waist down) first removing low-heeled shoes and re-
placing them with high-heeled ones (introducing a vocabulary of sexualised
footwear that he was to employ again in The Lover), and then humming as she
applies nail polish (Pinter 1960, 6). The original intention, then, was to dem-
onstrate her in a state of transformation from school mistress to a more overtly
sexualised role, rather than to confirm her status as schoolteacher as in the final
filmed manuscript. Either way, her objectification as a potential focus of erotic
interest is her first introduction, and the camera’s gaze (embellished by the de-
liberate omission of Sally’s face in the shot) ensures that such a presentation of
her is more efficiently achieved than might be realised in a staged version. This
cutaway to Sally in her room, of course, did not feature in the final script for
radio and theatre; the strategy is only appropriate to the screen medium, and
most effective on screen. There is a comparable moment in The Lover, where
Richard’s wife Sarah prepares herself for his return in the role of her lover Max,
and on screen she transforms from his wife, to his mistress.
Sarah in bedroom changing into tight dress. She tightens suspenders, smooths stock-
ings, her hips, her hair. /…/ She goes back into hall, looks at herself in long hall mirror.
She turns about, looking at her body. She slowly regards her legs and flanks in mirror,
turning. (Pinter 1963, 2)
The description continues to detail how she looks for shoes to change into,
and reclines to read a magazine and smoke a cigarette before stroking her shoul-
der and crossing her legs. The scene that this becomes in the television broadcast
lasts just over three minutes. It starts, following the trajectory of stockings being
pulled up Sarah’s legs, focussing on the female form, and it ends – following a
brief camera pan to concentrate on Sarah’s legs again, with her opening the door
to her lover Max. At one point the actress, Vivien Merchant, has clearly been in-
structed to hold her hand unnaturally high after zipping up the back of her dress,
rather than letting it fall naturally. This facilitates a clear and uninterrupted view
of her rear as the camera pans down her form. What we are invited to watch in
the original television version, then, is the transformation of Sarah from wife to
mistress, and a deliberate and lingering focus on the female body, echoed in the
attention Sarah gives to herself with repeated checks in mirrors. It is an invitation
to the viewer to enjoy the female form, and a preparation for the scene of sexual
tension that is to follow. This is all, quite straightforwardly, addressed to con-
ventional male heterosexual triggers of desire, and our visual consumption of
Sarah prepares us for the drama of sexual negotiation. It also invites perceptions
of Sarah as sexually aware, and self-preparing as an object of sexual delight for a
man to enjoy (and for her own enjoyment). An earlier, unpublished draft makes
some of this more explicit, with Sarah touching her face, throat and breasts at
the end of the sequence, suggesting an auto-erotic pleasure gleaned from her
ritual preparation to meet her lover (whom we later learn is simply her husband
performing an alter-ego).
The published stage play, however, omits this transformation scene altogether,
and cuts straight to Richard’s return home in the evening immediately after his
departure in the morning (Pinter 1996, 150). If the scene as performed on screen
were played out on most conventional stage spaces, it could not command the
same lingering voyeuristic focus that a camera can direct. It would, in fact, be
quite boring for an audience. In another play, Pinter nonetheless managed to
achieve a similar effect verbally, but with a challenge to (rather than a direct
employment of) the construction and possession of feminine definition. This is
found in lines given to the character of Ruth in The Homecoming:
I… move my leg. That’s all it is. But I wear… underwear… which moves with me…
it… captures your attention. Perhaps you misinterpret. The action is simple. It’s a leg…
moving. My lips move. Why don’t you restrict… your observations to that? (Pinter
1997, 60-1)
There is a great leap forward here between 1962 and 1965 in the manner in
which women are represented by Pinter, though both The Lover and The Home-
coming adopt the same arguably male-dominated vocabularies of gender con-
struction as both create a deliberate focus on aspects of the female form that are
presented in a sexually provocative manner. However, whereas the camera in
The Lover invites a slow appreciation of Sarah’s body, conspiratorially protected
by the distance between audience and action that the medium allows, in The
Homecoming Ruth controls that invitation to the onstage characters – and the
audience by extension – in a manner that allows a critique of the male gaze by
foregrounding it, by capturing it in motion and addressing it in a way that the
camera in The Lover simply could not. Male heterosexual members of any audi-
ence might feel discomfort at Ruth’s invitation occurring live before them, which
parallels and is exacerbated by the awkwardness the moment creates onstage. In
finding a verbal, dramatic stage equivalent to the camera’s voyeurism, in this way,
Pinter begins to deconstruct the discourses of desire and negotiation of desire.
Much of Pinter’s work in his television dramas moves towards and aspires to-
wards this dramatic moment.
Those discourses of desire are closely associated, Pinter seems to wish to dem-
onstrate, with the will to control. Desire sets in operation a process of acquisition
of the object of desire, but when that object is a subject, Pinter seems to stress,
with a will to self-definition and self-gratification within the same contract of
desire, then human frailty can spoil or confuse the consummation of desire. The
lead male characters in each of the teleplays of 1960-65 are all obsessed with clar-
ifying the nature and motives of the female characters that cause them anguish,
and, when those female counterparts confound those attempts to find certainty,
in their desperation the males resort to projecting fantasies or hoped-for truths
on to these women to establish some sense (or illusion) of control or stability
for themselves. The close of The Lover provides one example here. Following
Richard’s attempts to integrate their day-time sex games more fully into their
evening lives, Sarah asks ‘Would you like me to change?’, meaning that she might
change her clothes from the housewifely to the tight dress and high heels, but
indicating also her willing flexibility if a new schema of sexual play is being initi-
ated. The following final words of the play are both mildly shocking and suitably
oblique. Kneeling on the floor, facing one another with Sarah leaning over Rich-
ard, he answers: ‘Yes. Pause. Change. Pause. Change. Pause. Change your clothes.
Pause. You lovely whore’ (Pinter 1996, 184). The pauses here are pregnant with
erotic tension, but also allow emphasis on the demand for ‘change’, its possible
various meanings (other than changing clothes), while delaying the articulation
of that final defining word. Is this a man simply talking dirty to his wife as part
of a temporary shared subscription to debasement for mutually stimulating ex-
citement, or is it a defining stamp of the base utility of a woman for a man?
The plays ends, then, charged with both eroticism and a certain ambiguity that
gives us pause for thought – it passes a responsibility to the audience (or view-
ers) to resolve that ambiguity without directing the nature of that response. The
command for ‘change’ comes from within an established, unchanging role-play
game, the rules of which seem very much unchanged, to the seeming content
and amorous advantage of both characters.
The end of The Collection is less equivocal in its representation of male mo-
tivation. The play centres on attempts by James to confirm and respond to a
narrative of his wife Stella’s act of supposed infidelity in a hotel room in Leeds.
Through the play, we hear no less than six different versions of what might or
might not have happened in Leeds between Stella and the character of Bill, and
this accumulation of narrative possibilities renders the actual truth less impor-
tant than an agreement over any truth. After a confrontation between James and
Bill, and an intervention by Harry, Bill’s partner James challenges Stella with a
final version of what happened in Leeds, which she neither confirms nor denies.
He might be regarded as attempting to clarify an uncertain past episode by de-
manding that she acknowledge (whether true or not) a version that he can at
least live with, and thereby a narrative of her as his wife that can cause their
relationship no further damage. ‘That’s the truth, isn’t it?’ he insists, but Stella’s
‘friendly, sympathetic’ face gives nothing away (Pinter 1996, 145). The truth as
regards others, Pinter seems to suggest, is nothing more than a negotiated story,
not a set of established facts, especially where verification is not available outside
of testimony. Within a relationship, then, he asserts that stability relies upon suc-
cessfully negotiating the narratives of that relationship. In this, The Collection
does not differ from The Lover, though the motivations are radically different.
Each of the television plays under examination demonstrates the pitfalls of
masculine urges to categorise women stereotypically as a means to easily define
and emotionally contain their relationships. From one perspective, then, per-
haps it is difficult to defend these scripts against accusations of misogyny, at least
when read from certain contemporary perspectives. Pinter’s interests, though,
lay in the power shifts and negotiations that these archetypal structures facili-
tated for drama, and in the very human contradictions to which male emotional
needs were exposed when confronted by such easily reducible models of femi-
ninity. Pinter is not simply sketching female duality (or, indeed, multiple facets)
as perceived by men, but seems to have been intent upon exposing the apparatus
of the appropriating quality of the male gaze (as with Ruth’s statement, above),
and drawing women who remain elusively dominant by reflecting and subvert-
ing what is projected upon them by men, or whose sexual identities are so robust
as to escape male classification.
The origins of these thematic strands – which become all too evident when
one considers Pinter’s work for screen instead of simply concentrating on his
stage drama – can be found in Pinter’s one and only novel, The Dwarfs, written
in the early 1950s but published only in 1990. In the 1960s, Pinter returned to
this unpublished manuscript to recycle the material for a radio play, and then a
stage play, both with the same title. In the original novel version three friends
– Len, Mark and Peter – form what is referred to by one of them as a male
‘church’; ‘an alliance of the three of them for the common good, and a faith
in that alliance’ (Pinter 1990, 56). We witness the blossoming of the increased
closeness of Peter and Mark, which is later shattered when Mark sleeps with the
girlfriend that Peter had been seeing but from whom he was separated, Virginia.
The emphasis on this growing then lost friendship is removed from the dra-
matic versions of the material, and Virginia plays no role in the radio or stage
play whatsoever; her character is excised completely from those later dramatic
scripts. A twelve-page chapter in the novel in which the two men argue over
what they perceive of each other, and the manner in which they projected their
friendship and betrayed one another, is reduced to three lines of dialogue in the
play. Within this interaction, though, the key concern of the novel is laid bare,
and the manner in which inauthentic behaviour festers and destroys genuine
human contact is effectively conveyed. The human dilemma that Pinter seems
set on exploring at this early stage in his literary career, is how our need for
consistency among one another involves developing a necessary trust in what
others project of themselves. The dilemma is articulated most precisely by the
character of Len in The Dwarfs:
Occasionally, as I say, I believe I perceive a little of what you are, but that’s pure accident.
Pure accident on both our parts. The perceived and the perceiver. It must be an accident.
We depend on such accidents to continue. (Pinter 1990, 151-2)
This theme is pertinent to interpersonal relationships, which only become a

repeated concern for Pinter’s dramatic writing after The Caretaker (The Room,
The Birthday Party, The Dumb Waiter, The Hothouse and The Caretaker do not
feature married relationships or friendships at the centre of their key dramatic
concerns in the way The Lover, The Collection, Tea Party and The Homecom-
ing so clearly do). We might consequently consider his works of the early 1960s
as informed by this concern from the novel, reflected most precisely in marital
relationships. Towards the novel’s end, as part of the concluding argument be-
tween Mark and Pete, Mark berates Pete’s attitude to women: ‘Your behaviour to
Virginia /…/ has been criminal for years’ (Pinter 1990, 170). He offers an egali-
tarian view of inter-gender relationships that sweeps aside Pete’s hierarchical
view of people’s relative worth: ‘You exist, but just remember that so does she, in
her own right’ (Pinter 1990, 178). Virginia’s degeneration (as Pete wills us to see
it) is then presented by Pinter as an individual choice, and her and Mark’s mutual
seduction concludes and defines it as straightforward sexual independence. The
importance of this novel to an appreciation of the corpus of Pinter’s dramatic
writing lies in the key strands of male friendship, and the betrayals that under-
mine it, and of the various representations of women that spring from within
that masculine, heterosexual setting. The broader theme of the ‘male church’ is
something to which Pinter returned most notably first with The Caretaker and
later with No Man’s Land and Betrayal. Written at a time when he was involved
creatively in writing about gender battles for television, it could be useful to con-
sider The Caretaker in the light of this, and as a vehicle for re-considering the
syntax of the ‘male church’ first considered in his novel.
The film-maker Joseph Losey first became aware of Harold Pinter when he
saw A Night Out on television in 1960, and wrote to its author to express his
admiration. With that correspondence there began one of Pinter’s most satis-
fying artistic collaborations, matching that which he was to enjoy with Peter
Hall in the theatre. Pinter was to write four screenplays for Losey: The Servant
(which was released in 1963), Accident (in 1967), The Go-Between (in 1971) and
The Proust Screenplay (composed in 1972, though unfilmed). The first of these,
The Servant, was based on a short story by Sir Robert Maugham and contained a
significant amount of original material by Pinter, who was particularly attracted
to the relationship between the two men in the novella. Pinter demonstrates,
scene by scene, the development of a relationship between Barrett and Tony, and
the consequences of the self-centred pursuit of desire in which they both in-
dulge. We are invited to watch the slow destruction of the central character of
Tony and wince at its inevitability. Barrett not only brings about Tony’s degen-
eration, but succumbs to it himself through his upwardly-mobile ambition. We
see the failure of potential between people, the human inclination towards com-
fort in contact, infested by a lazy indulgence in personal gain, untempered by
any sensible investment in one’s individual potential. All of this is demonstrated
through relationships between men in the film, with the female characters acting
as peripheral victims, ready collaborators or catalysts for the male relationship.
Whereas his earliest dramas are renowned for bringing into operation a series
of power games, in Pinter’s own film of The Caretaker, in The Servant and in his
television plays, the manoeuvres for domination arguably play a more superficial
role in what the dramas set out to achieve. The power games here are master-
fully conceived, but the focus instead is on the betrayal of trust, on the failure to
achieve comfort through the intimacy and friendship that is plainly there. The
Caretaker and The Servant both express a series of failures to invest in what is
offered, and the frustration in seeing what is offered not taken fully advantage of.
We see that unclarified relationship between another two men Stephen and
Charley (and again a woman that binds them, as in The Dwarfs) in Accident
(1967), adapted from Nicholas Mosley’s novel of the same name. But in this film,
Pinter takes the lack of freedom to do the right thing that Mosley embedded in
his work and demonstrates a human failing to be true to oneself. He exposes his
own fascination – through the observations he constructs – with how we interact
with the codes and rules of normative social and moral behaviour, and how these
are constructed and manipulated by us. The betrayals he documents in this film
are ultimately not people’s betrayals of one other (to have extra-marital affairs is
presented as a norm, for example, as it would be in the play Betrayal over a dec-
ade later) but betrayals of themselves, of their own integrity and dignity.
Notably, whereas in The Servant or the television dramas, the female charac-
ters suffer as foils to the men, or act as narrative devices, pushing the men into
their difficult corners, with Accident a concern for women as individuals is much
more evident, and one of the most piercingly refreshing pieces of dialogue in the
film is given to Stephen’s wife, Rosalind, when in quite straightforward terms
she dismisses Charley’s infidelities with the young teenager Anna as ‘pathetic’,
‘puerile’ and ‘banal’ (Pinter 2000, 420-1), releasing her contempt for her husband
Stephen (who so evidently desires the same girl) as much as for Charley.
The similarities between Accident and The Homecoming, written very close
to each other, are evident. In both there is an elusive central, powerful female,
desired by a social group of men around her who find themselves bound together
by her. Their coming together as a masculine group is in some way defined by
her, and revolves around her. Both works even feature a professor of philosophy.
It is also difficult to like any of the characters in either the play or the film. We
can only slowly construct contempt for these people, reserving pity only for the
women, most desperately so in the rape of Anna, presented as something of a for-
gone conclusion near the end of Accident. Both works generate their dramas by
examining the interaction of a set of established attitudes to women with a wom-
an who challenges those attitudes by taking control of the factors (male physical
and emotional needs) which inform them, making clear that they are the natural
conclusions of that period of writing for television between 1960 and 1965.
If the necessary inclusion of a female catalyst or foil within processes of male
interaction is a determinable theme in some of Pinter’s writing in the early 1960s,
it was in many ways resolved and re-defined with Accident and The Homecoming.
The characters of Emma in Betrayal (1978) or the Anna/Sarah character in The
French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981) are clearly highly evolved versions of this new
female character, in total possession of their own sexual identities, and not sim-
ply extensions of male desire. As such, Accident and The Homecoming together
represent something of a threshold in Pinter’s writing, and the creative phase
that followed involved an examination of established married couples that now
focussed more on the risk that we become strangers to one another: Landscape,
Night, Old Times and Betrayal all result from this new perspective.
By applying Pinter’s films and TV work as a lens through which to consider
his thematic interests as a writer, it is possible to re-focus our attention on the
whole body of his work. In doing so, it is easier to move away from the well-
trodden paths of Pinter criticism that focus on power games and domination.
A clearer trajectory through his work is evident, one that foregrounds human
relationships and the frailties of behaviour that lead us to misplace the qualities
of community and togetherness that we need to thrive emotionally. A fascination
with interaction between men, and the formation of a ‘male church’ is a theme
that permeates most of Pinter’s writing, and a consequent concern, eventually,
to regard the position of women in relationship with this ‘church’, and as agents
in their own emotional well-being, is something that is seen to grow from this
writer’s return to this interest in community and society.
References
Clayton, J. 1964. Cinematic trailer for The Pumpkin Eater. http://www.youtube.
com/watch?gl=GB&v=p1svju47XsQ (accessed 2 Dec 2011).
Pinter, H. 1960. My Nephew. Unpublished, unpaginated typescript early draft of
Night School. British Library Manuscripts collection, acquisition number MS
ADD 88880/1/46.
–, 1963. The Lover. Unpublished typescript of screenplay. British Library Manu-
scripts collection, acquisition number MS ADD 88880/1/34.
–, 1981. Plays: Two. London: Methuen.
–, 1990. The Dwarfs. London: Faber and Faber.
–, 1996. Plays Two. London: Faber and Faber.
–, 1997. Plays Three. London: Faber and Faber.
–, 2000. Collected Screenplays 1. London: Faber and Faber.
Pinter in Italy
Nick Ceramella
Chapter Two
‘Silence Symphony’ Conducted by Pinter and
Eduardo, Two World Theatre Maestri
Introduction
Though we speak of drama as a literary creation, we have to bear in mind it is
meant to be acted on stage; until we see it, we do not know whether it “works” or
not. In fact, when we read a play – an activity usually considered “unnatural” –
we have no real grasp of what it is like unless we try to imagine at least how actors
should present the script on the stage. Yet, in agreement with what Pinter said
about his plays lending themselves well to reading, I believe that if you want to
analyse drama thoroughly, there is no better way than reading it. I must say that
if that is true, then I am in a “privileged” position: teaching.
In the past academic year, I taught a course on Pinter, focusing on his last play,
Celebration (2000) while touching on some earlier ones as well. For the reasons
just stated, I knew my task was going to be quite as daunting as it is for stage
directors. But while a director can give voice to the text through the actors, when
teaching you are working on a cold page, like a musician who is reading a music
score instead of playing it. We know there is no such problem as long as you
analyse a play from a critical or linguistic point of view, whereas it is a differ-
ent story when you come across stage directions, indicating pause and silence,
which make you realise you don’t really know what should be happening on the
stage then. In fact, generally speaking, unlike a musician who just stops play-
ing, according to the number of bars and difference in the length of the pauses
marked on the score, for how long should an actor keep silent? What should
s/he be doing during those never-ending moments? And what meaning does the
playwright intend to convey thereby? And, equally important, what is this close
connection between music and play writing all about? An answer comes from
Pinter himself:
I don’t know how music can influence writing, but it has been very important for me,
both jazz and classical music. I feel a sense of music continually in writing, which is a
different matter from having been influenced by it. (Bensky 1966)
Even so, it is true that music plays an important role in Pinter’s writing style.
In Jean Stapleton’s words, the American actor, David Strathairn, one of the finest
32 Nick Ceramella
interpreters of Pinter’s plays, when rehearsing the double bill The Birthday Party
and Mountain Language, said: “The natural pauses always seem to be right where
he [Pinter] wrote them. His pause or beat comes naturally in the rhythm of the
conversation”. I would add to that that silence comes into play in the same way.
On the other hand, didn’t Beethoven use silence as a dramatic device especially
in his Symphonies? Or did Janáček not try to catch the intonations and rhythms
of his native Czech, particularly in his string quartet Intimate Letters?
In the first part of this chapter, I will deal with Pinter’s conception of stage
techniques, such as silence, pause and dialogue. Though he was not keen on
discussing his technical features, he said he distinguished two kinds of “silences”:
one, when no word is uttered; the other, when a stream of words is heard, al-
though it actually indicates what we do not hear. Whichever the case, this is
mostly considered a failure of communication. The question is whether this
is true or not. I will argue that in effect we do communicate in our silence, in
what is unsaid, which perhaps is our way of protecting ourselves by erecting a
‘barrier’ between us and the others.
Then, in the second part, I will look into the masterful use of silence by the
Italian playwright Eduardo De Filippo, while making reference also to Dario
Fo’s critical appreciations; Fo is the 1997 Winner of the Nobel Prize in Litera-
ture, who knew both Pinter and Eduardo personally. To support my point, I’ll
quote mainly from Eduardo’s Le voci di dentro [Engl. Inner Voices] (1973), and,
in order to mark the Italian author’s popularity in Britain, I would like to stress
that Ralph Richardson’s last appearance at the National Theatre (London) was
in the lead role of Inner Voices, in June 1983. I will suggest that, since Eduardo
represents the natural link to Pirandello’s theatre, he can also be associated with
Pinter. But, above all, I will argue they share the theme of the fear of intrusion
by someone from the outside into a family’s life, and, of course, I will emphasise
their unsurpassed use of silence and people’s real use of language, the very keys
to understanding their dramatic worlds.
Harold Pinter (1930-2008)

In Pinter’s plays the characters speak a peculiar kind of English, described as
Pinteresque, or called Pinterese, a term coined by theatre critics to talk about his
contribution to the English used on the stage. David Hare, one of Pinter’s clos-
est friends and colleagues, said provocatively that he “has cleaned the gutters of
the English language,” meaning that his characters did not use standard English,
but were allowed instead to resort to their everyday language with all its sole-
cisms and tautologies. This is certainly the case, from the early days of his career,
‘Silence Symphony’ 33
with plays like The Room (1957), The Birthday Party (1958), and The Caretaker
(1960), where Pinter enjoyed catching the absurdities people utter while speak-
ing. This was far from being an end in itself; in fact, if it is true that that is what
can be caught on the surface, there is the actual mental process lying beneath a
wrongly chosen, or nonsensical word which does have a dramatic function of
its own. We know this stylistic approach partly contributed to his initial suc-
cess when his audience enjoyed laughing at the mistakes other people made.
Though it must be said Pinter’s greatness is surely not simply due to that low-life
dialogue use of English and, as he became older, he relied less on that as well as
on melodramatic effects. It follows then a) that a real understanding of Pinter’s
use of language must take into due consideration how language is actually used
in common human ‘interaction’; and, b) that people are not so articulate and
impeccable as they appear on the stage. Indeed, we know from daily experience
that the explicit and discursive style does not belong to ordinary interaction,
whereas its use on the stage can be explained by verse drama ever since the days
of ancient Greek theatre, when prosody and rhetoric fixed the pattern for rea-
sons which pertain to them, but not to the real use of language. However, this
convention was so deeply rooted that between the end of the nineteenth and the
beginning of the twentieth centuries, this linguistic formal approach continued
to be applied even to naturalistic theatre, such as Ibsen’s and Shaw’s. In effect, one
of the first playwrights to get characters to speak more as they would in real life
was the Swedish playwright, August Strindberg, while the Russian Anton Chek-
hov introduced indirect dialogue. An example in point of the latter is The Cherry
Orchard, where conversations are still very rhetorical in their beauty and perfec-
tion, but are marked by the presence of this language device. As time passed,
things began to change, when modern dramatists realized the verbal element did
not necessarily have to be the dominant aspect of drama, or that, what was said
was not so vital after all; conversely, the action it contained was.1
1 Ultimately, we should acknowledge that non-verbal actions and pauses as well as si-
lences of the characters are equally important, even if we know that dramatic writing
is traditionally based on the oratory art of dialogue and long speeches which have
always been a dominant feature in the theatre. If one thinks of Shakespeare’s Julius
Caesar, Antony’s brilliantly phrased eulogy, pronounced before the Romans to praise
Ceasar, there we have an example of oratory art at Cicero’s level. Characters like
Antony are absolutely articulate and need highly stylized verbal poetical expression.
But let’s face it, that is far from reality, because people are normally not as articulate as
we can sometimes hear them on the stage.
34 Nick Ceramella
Thus, even a nonsensical or inarticulate speech might be as dramatic as a

verbally brilliant one. And this is exactly what Pinter realised, together with
a few other playwrights like Beckett: characters having incoherent speech were
put at the centre of the stage showing their unspoken emotions. In brief, the
text hints at a hidden sub-text: there is a contrast between what is said and
what is unsaid and lies below. This innovative technique is stretched by Pinter
to its extreme, with Meg in The Birthday Party, or Aston and Davies in The
Caretaker:
Aston. What did you say your name was?

Davies. Bernard Jenkins is my assumed name.
Aston. No, your other one?
Davies. Davies. Mac Davies.
Aston. Welsh, are you?
Davies. Eh?
Aston. You Welsh?
(Pause)
Davies. Well, I been around, you know … what I mean … I been about …
Aston. Where were you born then?
Davies. (darkly) What do you mean?
Aston. Where were you born?
Davies. I was … uh … oh, it’s a bit hard, like, to set your mind back … see what I mean
… going back … a good way … lose a bit of track, like … you know … (Pinter
1979, 38-9)
Or
Davies. Caretaking, eh?

Aston. Yes.
Davies. Well, I … I never done caretaking before, you know … I mean to say … I
never … what I mean to say is … I never been a caretaker before.
(Pause)
Aston. How do you feel about being one, then?
Davies. Well, I reckon … Well, I’d have to know … you know …
Aston. What sort of …
Davies. Yes, what sort of … you know …
(Pause)
Aston. Well, I mean …
Davies. I mean, I’d have to … I’d have to …
Aston. Well, I could tell you …
Davies. That’s … that’s it … you see … you get my meaning?
Aston. When the time comes …
Davis. I mean, that’s what I’m getting at, you see …
Aston. More or less exactly what you ….

Davies. You see, what I mean to say … what I’m getting at is … I mean, what sort
of jobs…
(Pause)
Aston. Well, there’s things like the stairs … and the … the bells… (Pinter 1979, 51-2)
These splendid, concise dialogues produce a dramatic effect, due to the

contradiction between the words uttered and the emotional and psychologi-
cal action lying beneath them. Here the language has lost its rhetorical tone, its
informative element, and has fully merged into dramatic action where there is
little verbal communication between the characters. From the acting viewpoint,
it goes without saying that such roles are demanding on the actors, who need to
be experienced as human beings and professionals to manage to flesh out the
silences and communicate the rich subtext these strange characters must em-
body. However, seeing a play like that is equally demanding on the spectators,
who need to examine clues, try to put together the untold stories that shape each
character’s life, drive the plot and, above all, interpret silences. It is not incidental
that Pinter’s plays are noted for their use of silence to increase tension, under-
statement, and cryptic small talk. On 12 October 2004, when interviewed by the
Italian newspaper Il Giornale, Pinter was asked, “What do you concentrate on
when you think about one of your creatures?”. He answered, “On silence. It is
in silence that characters acquire depth, presence. In what is not said.”2 In other
words, the unsaid in his works is as important as the said; and is frequently as
eloquent. We can stress then that his resorting to silence and pauses is a very
expressive form of dramatic speech, which Pinter made a wide use of, as shown
by their frequency: 140 pauses in Betrayal, 149 in The Caretaker, and as many as
224 in The Homecoming. Typically they last an average of 10 seconds each, but at
the opening of The Caretaker, Pinter writes
mick is alone in the room, sitting on the bed. He wears a leather jacket.
Silence.
He slowly looks about the room looking at each object in turn.
He looks up the ceiling, and stares at the bucket. Ceasing, he sits quite still, expressionless,
looking out front.
Silence for thirty seconds. (Pinter 1979, 16)
2 All translations from Italian in this chapter are provided by N. Ceramella unless oth-
erwise specified.
36 Nick Ceramella
Likewise, in Eduardo’s Natale in casa Cupiello the play opens as follows:

As the curtain rises there is a long pause. Luca is snoring fast asleep. Eventually, the door
on the right opens and Concetta appears.3 (Eduardo 1973, 67)
She looks around the room without uttering a word. The whole scene, as di-
rected by Eduardo, lasts as long as about two minutes.
Although we know that Pinter did not particularly like to talk about the techni-
calities in his works, we can tell there are three very different kinds of pauses in his
plays: three dots when one is looking for a word, or a momentary incoherence; a
pause demonstrates that the thought process is continuing and marks a longer in-
terruption to the action, where the lack of speech becomes a form of speech itself;
a silence is the longest form of interruption, a sign of the conclusion of a certain
thought stretched to its climax and the beginning of a new topic of conversation.4
Be that as it may, whatever the length of these pauses happens to be, every-
body involved in the magic of the theatre is to take a specific active role. Actors
have to be conscious they are acting and interpreting moments of deep emotion
if they want the audience to feel that to. I believe it is the same thing with the
readers of a play. Spectators and readers alike should be made to realise charac-
ters emerge from these pauses with their attitude completely changed. It is obvi-
ous that, if that does not happen, there is, to say it in Latin, a non sequitur (lack
of response), and the actor is responsible for ridiculing him/herself as well as the
character who is being interpreted.
3 Italian original: All’alzarsi del sipario, lunga pausa. Luca russa profondamente addor-
mentato. Infine si apre la porta di destra ed appare Concetta.
4 (Hall 2009, 163). We know Pinter hated explaining his craft, yet he wrote brilliantly
about drama. On commenting on his plays, he described pauses and explained his
theory of “two silences”, as defined in his speech to the National Student Drama Fes-
tival in Bristol in 1962, incorporated in the published version entitled “Writing for
the Theatre”:
I’m not a theorist. I’m not an authoritative or reliable commentator on the dramat-
ic scene, the social scene, any scene. I write plays, when I can manage it, and that’s all.
That’s the sum of it. Language, under these conditions, is a highly ambiguous business.
So often, below the word spoken, is the thing known and unspoken. /…/ A language,
I repeat, where under what is said, another thing is being said. /…/
There are two silences. One when no word is spoken. The other when perhaps
a torrent of language is being employed. The speech we hear is an indication of that
which we don’t hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, anguished or mocking
smokescreen. When true silence falls, we are still left with echo but are nearer naked-
ness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover
nakedness. (Pinter 1998).
Equally interesting is the frequent use of repetitions, one of those devices

that is often associated with Pinter. If it is true that repetitions don’t convey any
conceptual ideas, yet they still have a theatrical value by conveying dramatic
information. For example, a character can be friendly, although s/he is aware
the conversation is meaningless. Here are a couple of brilliant examples from
Celebration:
Lambert. This is the best restaurant in town. That’s what they say.
Matt. That’s what they say.
Lambert. This is a piss-up dinner. Do you know how much money I made last year?
Matt. I know this is a piss-up restaurant.
Lambert. This is a piss-up dinner. (Pinter 2000, 15)
Or
Matt. Well, it’s lovely to be here, I’ll say that.
Lambert. Lovely to be here.
Julie. Lovely. Lovely.
Matt. Really lovely. (Pinter 2000, 22)
However, such apparently meaningless dialogues show how empty the speak-
ers are, and how boring their lives are; therefore, continuing the conversation is
a way to feel alive. It follows that people repeat statements not because they like
to do that deliberately, but because, in this way, the focus is moved from a real
issue which would otherwise prevail on them. This kind of dialogue is a way of
self-protecting oneself and, perhaps, even of achieving an emotional advantage.
Hence, the repetition of the statement is more relevant than the statement itself
and its explicit discursive content. But this does not mean Pinter intends to show
that language is unable to communicate. On the contrary, as Pinter himself put it
in a BBC Radio interview with Kenneth Tynan in 1960:
I feel that instead of any inability to communicate there is a deliberate evasion of com-
munication. Communication between people is so frightening that rather than do that
there is a continual cross-talk, a continual talking about other things, rather than what
is at the root of their relationship. (Billington 2007, 124)
It seems then that people interact more emotionally than logically. As a result,
the tone of voice and the emotional colour of words often convey more mean-
ings than the words themselves do semantically. So, what really matters, in terms
of communication, is the effect words have on people rather than the ideas they
express. Thus, the important thing in Pinter’s work is, what he is trying to say
to the audience via his chosen style of language, action and silences. It is worth
underlining also that with the pauses, interactions and dislocated conversation,
Pinter creates incoherence, while building conflict into dialogue adds interest to
38 Nick Ceramella
the story and the characters. As a result, the audience is not sure what is going
to happen next.
Talking of literary devices, as hinted at above, concerning Chekhov,
oblique dialogue is another way to add tension to a conversation which oc-
curs when a speaker doesn’t answer a question or changes subjects abruptly.
Often, our minds are on what we will say when the other person finishes,
and we don’t listen carefully to the words coming at us. We usually pick up
the mood and perhaps the gist, but what we want really is to get our own
words in. Here is a point in case, ‘It’s midday, the sun is so hot today.’ If we
are listening carefully, we might respond: ‘It makes my skin ache.’ But if we
are concerned with getting home before lunchtime, we might say: ‘We’ll miss
lunch unless we hurry.’ The second choice is not responsive, but that does
not make it any less relevant or uninteresting. This, incidentally, is similar
to what in discourse analysis is called coherence as opposed to cohesion. In-
stead of a direct response, quite often people use an indirect response, or even
an unresponse, or a commentary, misunderstandings, and the exchanges that
result from these non-dialogues trail off into uncharted territory. Again, in
Celebration, we can read:
Matt. What did she say?
Prue. I mean we were sisters, weren’t we?
Matt. Well, what did she say?
Prue. I’ll never forget what you said. You sat on my bed. Didn’t you? Do you
remember?
Lambert. This girl was in love with me – I’m trying to tell you.
Prue. Do you remember what you said? (Pinter 2000, 36)
In the same play, Pinter resorts to different literary devices to handle a variety
of situations:
a. questions are left unanswered, followed up by a question, e.g. Matt asks
Lambert if he enjoyed sex, “Did you enjoy sex?”, to which he retorts, “Sex?”
(2000, 47).
b. let two or three dialogue passages go by before answering an earlier question.
c. mimic the speaker’s line. e. g. Lambert says “Fabulous evening”, and Julie
simply repeats “Fabulous.” (2000, 70).
d. interrupt the speaker.
And last but not least, our author sometimes prefers monologues to dialogues
(see Richard’s long ‘interjections’ in Celebration), or has two monologues inter-
sect temporarily only to emphasize how little there is to discuss. Mostly, Pinter’s
plays consist of one word after another (see those two pages (Pinter 2000, 51-2)
of ‘Hello’ followed by a name still in Celebration.) Although this kind of dialogue

is not what you would expect on the stage, paradoxically what sustains our inter-
est is the unusual sequence of words in them. In Celebration, initially, Pinter’s
dramatic dialogue appears to be similar to naturally occurring conversation; the
two speakers ask questions, respond and repeat utterances. The stage setting, de-
void of props other than two tables emerges as a blank page enabling Pinter’s
specific language of oblique dialogue to be fore-grounded. Unlike traditional
staging where the characters either have always got the mot juste, or struggle to
find it, in our author’s dialogue, when Prue says, “Can I thank you? Can I thank
you personally? I’d like to thank you myself, in my own way.” (Pinter 2000, 22),
she is clearly struggling for communication, and when she thinks she has found
it she may repeat it almost as if she wants to enjoy her successful research. In this
play, one finds the result of this dramatic art which makes Pinter the dominant
author of the Anglophone theatre of the past forty years or so: a perfect ham-
mering concision machine and bitter irony, where repetitions merge, cross each
other and slide on the surface of a reality different from that which is only ap-
parently expressed. And it is from there that Pinter believed that an innovative
treatment of the hypocrisy of today’s language comes, this propaganda which
offers itself as honest speaking in neo-totalitarianism’s service, which in turn ap-
pears as Democracy.
From the political standpoint of the use of language and silence in particular,
Havel, Bond, and the Beckett of What Where are among the very few modern
playwrights who, like Pinter, have analysed thoroughly the political dynamics of
silence and have used speech as a powerful political instrument to manipulate
reality (see also the second part of this chapter). Language alleges control over
the world to which it refers through conversations which, given an impressive
use of questions with no answers, names, allusions, and so on, make the dialogue
impossible and provoke silence, while denying reciprocity, as is the case when
Julie in Celebration asks “Wasn’t that me darling?” In turn, Lambert replies with
another question, “Who?”, and Matt interfering says “Her.” Then Lambert once
more says, “Her? No. Not her. A girl. I used to take her for walks along the river.”
(Pinter 2000, 34-5) This is a good example of the efficacy of linguistic control
in Pinter’s last play which recalls that of his early works (e.g. The Homecom-
ing where language is vital in the struggle over space and bodily embodiment).
Within such linguistic contest, silence stands as a symbol of the power language
has to ‘render silence’. In one word, a character is often dumfounded in spite of
the efforts of another to get him/her to speak. Silence in Pinter’s drama preserves
its inaccessibility, refuses speech and manages to reject such attacks and impos-
es a form of pre-verbal potency. Hence, it is the interface of the private space,
40 Nick Ceramella
represented by one’s house, where intrusions are not admissible. All that is best
summarised by Stanton B. Garner Jr:
The politics of silence in Pinter’s drama resides in paradox and ambiguity, as an arena
both constrained and free, its power of utterance inseparable from its linguistic indeter-
minacy. That language mounts such persistent raids upon this field of the inarticulate
does not overcome the resistance that this field offers to linguistic examination, even
ours. Pinter may have said of his characters that “it is in the silence that they are most
evident to me” but this knowledge is the far more difficult awareness of the unspoken,
within a political field that is assertive in the very silence of its containment. Plays like
The Homecoming, Old Times, or One for the Road challenge us to confront the unspoken
and the unspeakable, recognize its frequent indeterminacy, and allow it its essential po-
litical force. (Garner 2008)
As an indirect reply to this, Pinter himself said that, while others detected ‘dis-
turbing undertones’, he merely intended basic stage directions in writing pause
and silence, and added:
These damn silences and pauses are all to do with what’s going on … and if they don’t
make any sense, then I always say cut them. I think they’ve been taken much too far
these silences and pauses in my plays. I’ve really been extremely depressed when I’ve
seen productions in which a silence happens because it says silence or a pause happens
because it says pause. And it’s totally artificial and meaningless. When I myself act in
my own plays, which I have occasionally, I’ve cut half of them, actually. (Burton 2007)
Of course, Pinter should not be taken literally by introducing the cuts indis-
criminately, in fact, he says, with reference to them, “if they don’t make sense.” So,
one cannot but agree with his close friend Sir Peter Hall saying that “it would be a
‘failure’ for a director or actor to ignore the pauses” and that Pinter “was right to
criticise productions in which actors were fetishising their pauses”, concluding:
A pause in Pinter is as important as a line. They are all there for a reason. Three dots is a
hesitation, a pause is a fairly mundane crisis and a silence is some sort of crisis. Beckett
started it and Harold took it over to express that which is inexpressible in a very original
and particular way, and made them something which is his… (Burton 2007)
As a matter of fact, it is widely known that Pinter gained confidence in this

technique following use of pauses and silence by Beckett, who certainly is the
first dramatist to employ them as a written form of communication. Yet, he him-
self said that he learnt, first, about the power of pause, silence and intense gesture,
from Donald Wolfit’s company with whom he appeared as an actor in Ham-
mersmith, London. Whatever the case, I believe that it is not by mere chance that
Pinter went back onto the stage and did ten performances of Beckett’s Krapp’s
Last Tape, in the Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court in October 2006; tickets
were gone within 16 minutes of the box-office opening. This play is a testament
monologue. According to critics and audience alike, from Pinter’s voice you
could tell he was shattered and felt stalked by death, and as Krapp says he would
not want his years back “not with the fire in [him] now”. He sat staring into the
slowly fading light in aghast silence as a death-bell distantly tolled. Everybody
agreed death could be felt in the air as a physical presence. That was Pinter’s last
piece of masterly acting as well as his last time on stage. Likewise, as we will see in
the continuation of this chapter, Eduardo De Filippo, too, resorted to Pirandello,
whom he acknowledged as his “maestro”, and appeared before his public leaving
a similar message as Pinter, wishing he would die on the stage too.
Eduardo De Filippo (1900-1984)

English-language readers are usually unfamiliar with the Italian theatre,
mainly because Italian plays are seldom produced in theatres in the Anglophone
world, and because the Italian theatre is traditionally actor-centred while the Eu-
ropean and American theatres are author-centred, though there are the extraor-
dinary cases of Edmund Kean in the nineteenth century and Laurence Olivier
in the twentieth. No other theatrical tradition has allowed such a close relation-
ship between the stage and the page. This is an approach starting from Ruzzante
(1496?-1542), in the early Renaissance, through the ‘capocomico’ (‘actor-
manager’), who was the only one entitled to claim the authorship of works in
the ‘commedia dell’arte’, and going on with Eduardo De Filippo and Dario Fo
(1926-) up to the present day. In spite of that, this has been seen as an anomaly
ever since Carlo Goldoni’s reform in the eighteenth century, or Luigi Pirandello’s
and Silvio D’Amico’s in the twentieth; all three have aimed at limiting the power
of actors in the theatrical world. And, ironically, the two best-known names of
Italian playwriting – Goldoni and Pirandello – stand outside this tradition, being
authors and not actors. So, apart from these great playwrights, there is no reper-
toire available to Italian directors comparable to the legacy of a whole period like
the Elizabethan Age of Shakespeare and the Jacobean Age of Ben Jonson in Eng-
land, and likewise the “siglo de oro” of Calderon de la Barca and Lope de Vega in
Spain, the comedies of Molière and the neo-classical age of Corneille and Racine
in France, or the Romantic age of Goethe and Schiller in Germany.
Having said that, it is undoubted that the Italian theatre made a major con-
tribution to shaping the European theatre. For our purposes in this research,
what is of great interest and relevance is the decree issued in 1697 by the ‘Roi
Soleil’ (‘Sun King’) of France, Louis XIV (1638-1715), to expel the Italian Play-
ers from Paris for mocking his mistress. He withdrew the command eventually
and came to an unprecedented, if not weird, compromise allowing them to work
42 Nick Ceramella
on the Left Bank of the Seine but only if they kept silent. This is how and when
pantomime, the modern art of silence, was born. This episode suggests that si-
lence, traditionally considered just as “absence of vocality” (Garner 2008), is in
fact rooted in an ambiguous form of speech which can be either admitted or not,
depending on the circumstances and topic of the play. Hence, silence can repre-
sent a challenge, a form of resistance, away from speech, involving a physical and
psychological enclosure which asserts its own performative power. This is indeed
a point exemplified by Shakespeare through Iago’s words, “From this time forth I
never will speak word,” after which he withdraws into a silence that we know will
not even be broken by “torments” (Shakespeare 2011, Act V, sc. ii).
Since this research focuses on the use of silence on the stage, it is worth point-
ing out that unlike the French theatre rich in conversation, except for Molière’s
plays, there is traditionally so little conversation in the Italian theatre. According
to the Italian critic Giovanni Macchia, who on writing about Molière’s ‘silenzio’
declared that Scaramuccia, the ‘maestro’ of the French comedians “doesn’t speak
and says great things” (Ital. non parla e dice grandi cose).
This leads us smoothly right to the point of the second part of this chapter:
the use of silence and gesture by Eduardo De Filippo, who like Pinter was a
great playwright, actor, and stage director. His theatre IS characterised by the
use of silences, starting from one of his early works, Le voci di dentro (The Voices
Within), a three-act play, written in 1948 and included in the collection Can-
tata dei giorni dispari (Cantata of the Odd Days). In this comedy, there is an
extravagant character, Zi’ Nicola (Uncle Nick), around whom the whole story
revolves, though he hardly ever appears and speaks only once in Act Two to
say, “Please a little peace” (Ital. Per favore un poco di pace). An immediate re-
sponse to that comes from his nephew Carlo, who greatly surprised comments,
“He has spoken… Uncle Nick has spoken!” (Ital. Ha parlato… Zi’ Nicola ha
parlato!), to which his brother remarked that “He has broken his orders.” (Ital.
Ha rotto ’a cunzegna). Then a green Bengal light is seen, indicating in Zi’ Nicola’s
code that death was approaching. In fact, following an explosion of fireworks,
which he used to store in a large quantity in his room, they find him dead.
In effect, we had previously learnt about Uncle Nick’s bizarre behaviour when
Carlo explained to Capa D’Angelo, who believed the old man did not answer
him because he was dumb:
No. It’s a rather long story. He doesn’t speak because he doesn’t want to. He has given it
up. Well, it’s been many years. He says that speaking is useless. Since mankind is deaf, he
could be dumb. So, as he doesn’t want to put his thoughts in words… because, among
other things, he is also illiterate… he gives vent to his inner feelings with “granades”,
bangs, and Catherine wheels. That’s why they call him Sparavierze (e.g. Verse-shooter)
in Naples. Because his fireworks are not really such: they’re verses. He is an extravagant
chap.5 (De Filippo 1978, 369).
This explains how Uncle Nick reveals in his sneaking way the absurdity of the
voices outside us and the monstrosity of the voices within. I feel that Eduardo, as
an actor and an artist, not only believed intimately in the philosophy of life of this
simple character, but he must have been most endeared to him since Zi’ Nicola
is the last role played by Eduardo himself in 1977 (cf. Pinter’s interpretation of
Krapp earlier in this chapter). Critics commented that in The Voices Within, the
author-actor reached a symbiosis between language and silence. This play is a
clear illustration of the theme of dumbness and silence which would come back
strongly in other comedies, such as Mia famiglia (Engl. My Family) and Gli esami
non finiscono mai (Engl. Exams Never End), taking shelter in silence and dreams
seen as the only outlet for human anxiety. By way of comparison, Ben and Gus
in Pinter’s Dumb Waiter pretend to be deaf, hesitate to speak and are even afraid
to do that, thus showing us that men have a precious gift, can communicate
through silence.
Moreover, there is also the Eduardian central theme of the hypocritical pic-
ture of the supposed ‘respectable family’, while in the background there is Italy
in the aftermath of the Second World War, marked by neurosis, disillusionment,
the brutishness and dejection of the average man of the street who sees in every
other person an enemy. Like the use of silence, this point is comparable with
Pinter’s idea of family and people’s insecurity and fear of the other who could
come from the outside world and menace one’s household.
Once more, like Pinter, Eduardo confines the whole play to one house, of
which another good example is Saturday, Sunday, Monday, written in 1959
but performed in English only in 1973, and then again in the direction of Alan
Bridges’ 1977 version. Laurence Olivier played Don Antonio, the aging patri-
arch of a large Italian family, who shows all his mastery in catching, through the
movement of his arms and hands of an old person, but above all, of the Italian
expressiveness. Note also that in the same year, Eduardo’s popularity with the
English public is further marked by an honoris causa degree given him by the
University of Birmingham. Another point in common between Eduardo and
5 Italian original: No. La storia è un pò lunga. Non parla perchè non vuol parlare. Ci
ha rinunziato. Eh, sono tanti anni. Dice che parlare è inutile. Che siccome l’umanità è
sorda, lui può essere muto. Allora, non volendo esprimere i suoi pensieri con la parola…
perché poi, tra le altre cose, è pure analfabeta… sfoga i sentimenti dell’animo suo con le
«granate», le «botte» e le girandole. Perciò a Napoli lo chiamano Sparavierze. Perché i
suoi spari non sono spari: sono versi. È uno stravagante.
44 Nick Ceramella
Pinter, according to all the actors they directed, is that these two geniuses let
actors express their opinions about the acting as well as the text. They were not
puppeteers who had full control over their creatures, but on the contrary, just as
in the case of Pirandello, they felt the characters ‘visited’ them.
Most important is also the way they interpreted their own personages in all
their incomparable vitality; in fact, there was a deep symbiosis in both Eduardo
and Pinter with those isolated dreamers whom they exalted through intense
looks and long deep silences. This is how Eduardo, in particular, managed to
reach the lyrical apex in certain famous scenes, consisting of a few cues and
silences full of meaning, which made some critics quite rightly talk of a ‘poetic
of silence’. Eduardo’s voice could be so intimate and intense as to cut silence
open and show it when he wanted to create drama, and the abysmal gap between
people through silence, thus becoming a materialization of a dream or a vision.
In order to accomplish this picture of Eduardo, I would now like to quote
what Dario Fo wrote in his Fabulazzo with reference to music as having a par-
ticular value both to himself and Eduardo, and, I would say to Pinter too.
Plays should be written in the pentagram – we often used to say that with Eduardo –
because it has tonalities, the progress of notes. When you act, you act on the notes: A, E,
C, C sharp, and pass on to the fourth bar, fifth, sixth.6 (Fo 1992, 331)
Music, then, being rhythm and melody, is a vital part of the texture of the text,
but to Eduardo and Fo is that particular element enhanced by the use of their re-
spective dialects, Lombard and Neapolitan, and in Pinter’s case is his deliberately
imperfect everyday English. Eduardo adapted the Neapolitan dialect, raising it to
the level of Standard Italian, but in fact he created a theatrical manner of expres-
sion which went beyond both the national language and the dialect to become a
universal language. Concerning this aspect Fo says:
It is true that, in many cases, the Neapolitan root is removed, reinvented, for the situa-
tions and the theatrical techniques. This is a downright linguistic transformation involv-
ing both the language spoken conventionally and one’s dialectal and popular origin. And
even cadences, sounds, pauses, intonations, are evidence of this new koine extended to
regional cultures.7 (Fo 1992, 323)
6 Italian original: Il teatro bisognerebbe scriverlo sul pentagramma – lo dicevamo spesso

con Eduardo – perché ha le tonalità, gli andamenti delle note. Quando reciti, reciti sulle
note: la, si, mi, do, do diesis, e vai in quarta battuta, in quinta, in sesta.
7 Italian original: Di fatto, in molti casi, la radice del napoletano viene rimossa, reinventa-
ta, per le situazioni e le tecniche teatrali. Si tratta di una vera e propria trasformazione
linguistica che fa riferimento sia alla lingua convenzionalmente parlata sia alla propria
Eduardo, thus, produced a pure kind of theatre without any sort of borders.
No wonder his plays were translated into many different languages (including
English) and, in 1962, he even toured the Soviet Union, Poland and Hungary
where intellectuals and people at large admired him and his theatre. The same
thing happened to Pinter, who had an obvious advantage, his mother tongue,
English, the most spoken language in the world. In any case, it must be said that
besides that, Pinter showed an outstanding ability to get his characters to use
the average English speaker’s language. He was fantastic at the cockney ‘piss-
take’. That is taking the piss out of someone, or if you like, mocking a person to
make him/her feel insecure, which is a primary “weapon” in the roaring London
“jungle” of hectic life. A good example is Lenny in The Homecoming, a success-
ful piss-taker who masks his mockery so well and gracefully that he consistently
makes his father uneasy by staring pleasantly at him, or, by simply ignoring him,
thus insulting him with “infinite charm and care” (Hall 2009, 163). In short,
Pinter, Eduardo, and Fo use their respective languages and emphasise the vocal
intonation, mimicry and gesture so well that they manage to reach a high level
of formal precision. The three of them stretch to the extreme the technique
of talking without words, leading to aphasia in its different forms (mumbling,
stammering, silence). Silence in them is used and developed so masterfully that,
Eduardo, in particular, managed to cover the entire range of aphasia, where si-
lence stretches from more or less long pauses to the stammering of dreamers
like Luca Cupiello in Natale in casa Cupiello (Engl. Christmas at the Cupiellos),
and Gennaro Jovine in Napoli milionaria! (Engl. Naples Millionaire!), recalling
quite closely Fo’s grammelot, that is to say an “onomatopoeic long rigmarole”
(Ital. sproloquio onomatopeico).
In this respect, as we saw in the first part, each of Pinter’s plays is based on the
same fundamental understanding of drama: the fascination of words on stage–
an effect which he achieved by surrounding words with silences, pauses, and
double takes, resulting in anamorphic distortions of the most common words
in the English language, making them strange and offensive. Likewise, silences
and deep pauses in Eduardo are accompanied by this other very significant ele-
ment, the fluttering about of his long bony hands, which almost split the char-
acter into two people. This was an extraordinary way to communicate, while
conveying the incommunicable side of the human condition. Eduardo meant to
give back to words and gestures their original colour, resisting the temptation of
origine dialettale e popolare. E persino cadenze, i suoni, le pause, le intonazioni, testimo-

niano di questa nuova koiné allargata alle culture regionali.
46 Nick Ceramella
a linguistic standardization, covering chaos beneath an apparent order, domi-

nated by the cant of people speaking as if they were dumb. As a matter of fact,
Fo says that Eduardo
/…/ has always refused to speak in “Italianesque” or “Italiot”, that is the semi-official,
bureaucratic, bookish, radio-TV language of the regime.8 (Fo 1992, 331)
Eduardo himself thought that, after all, Naples had traditionally been a place
where people from all over the world passed by, and had no other way to under-
stand one another but by gestures. “Then words were invented,” he said “The
same thing was with the theatre.” (Ital. Poi si inventavano le parole. La stessa cosa
avveniva nel teatro.). So, it seems that acting is one of those natural things with
Neapolitans. However, Eduardo began to work on a new way of acting when
he tried to detach himself from the family company “Teatro Umoristico I De
Filippo”. He started his laboratory experimentation in the 1930s, which made
Vittorio Viviani say “When Eduardo does not speak, he is a perfect orator”9
(Viviani 1968, 901). Actually, his intellectual curiosity and the influence of
Pirandello, whom he met in 1933, led him to experiment, in his ambiguous col-
lection Cantata dei giorni dispari (Cantata of the Odd Days), with the narration
technique and silences which would be a fundamental element of his play writing.
That corresponded to the foundation of his company ‘Il Teatro di Eduardo’ with
his sister Titina, in 1944, after his brother Peppino, a born comical genius, left the
company to go and work at the Teatro Nuovo in Milan. From then onwards that
technique, substantiating the so called “trinità eretica” (Engl. “heretical trinity”)
— actor’s dramaturgy, dialect world, and theatre in Italian — became the guiding
element of his theatre. It is not accidental then if in Odd Days, the relationship
between individual and society is not recovered and is emphasised in his acting
style through pauses and aphasia, that is by talking without words (parlare senza
le parole), as Eduardo used to say. Consequently, because in his theatre, deeply
marked by difficult communication (comunicazione difficile), not only saying, but
also keeping silent, meant doing. Thanks to silences and the emotional colour of
words and their “temperature”, the problems of the world, seen, in Shakespear-
ean terms, as a stage, take substance and spring out in their entirety. Words bear
Power in themselves, hence Dario Fo’s interpretation:
8 Italian original: /…/ si è sempre rifiutato di parlare in “italianesco” o “italiota”, cioè

nella lingua semi ufficiale, burocratica, libresca, radiofonico-televisiva del regime.
9 Italian original: Quando tace Eduardo è un perfetto oratore.
‘The words of power are’, Eduardo says it one of his poems, ‘all the same, and have the
same colour: dark grey.’ Whereas the words coming down from the stage have to be
coloured, express different moods, breathings, rhythms.10 (Fo 1992, 331)
Indeed, at the end of Eduardo’s great comedies “the curtain came down not at
the end of the story, but on the conclusion of a rhythm” (Ital. il sipario calava non
sulla fine della vicenda, ma sulla conclusione di un ritmo.). This is a line from one
of Eduardo’s poems, sounding like a brief monologue interposed with pauses,
which no one else can read with the same colourful voice and emotionality as
Eduardo. So, though I know that, and am obviously also aware of the fact that
it is most unlikely that the readers of this monograph may be Italians, let alone,
Neapolitans, I still think that it is worthwhile having this poem here in its origi-
nal version and without a translation:
Quant’è bello ’o culore d’ ’e pparole, /…/
si chillo c’ha scigliuto
canusceva
’a faccia,
’a voce
e ll’uocchie ’e nu tramonto.
Chillo ca sceglie
si nun sceglie buono
semmescano ’e culore d’ ’e pparole.
E che succede?
Na mmescafrancesca
’e migliar’ ’e
parole,
tutte eguale
e d’ ’o stesso culore:
grigio scuro. /…/
’O friddo se cunfonne c’’o calore
e ’a gente parla cumme fosse muta.
E chisto è ’o punto:
manco nu pittore
po’ scegliere ’o culore d’ ’e pparole. (De Filippo 1976, 10-1)
It is widely agreed that Eduardo’s cultural and social background, marked by

a great resistance to the spreading of the use of a national language on the stage,
got him to use the “dialect heresy”, which naturally led him to the use of pauses
10 Italian original: ‘Le parole del potere sono,’ lo dice Eduardo in una sua poesia, ‘tutte
uguali, e dello stesso colore: grigio scuro’, mentre la parola che scende dal palcoscenico
deve essere colorata, star dentro gli umori, i fiati, i ritmi.
48 Nick Ceramella
and active silences, which helped to evoke hidden and perhaps unconscious
tensions, needs and fears. Eduardo says in Baccalà, another one of his poems:
“Naples is a curious place, an ancient theatre, always open. / There are people
born there who, without rehearsing, / go down to the street and can act”11 (De
Filippo 1976, 191).
It is thanks to this theatre of memory, inherited from his father, Eduardo Scar-
petta, that Eduardo was connected to a Pirandellian line, just as today the works
of contemporary Neapolitan dramatists, such as Annibale Ruccello and Enzo
Moscato, or Ascanio Celestini, for what concerns research in the language field,
— through Pinter, Genet, Beckett and Artaud — can be linked with Viviani and
Eduardo, besides the great cinema actor Massimo Troisi, the protagonist of the
film The Postman (1994) and Dario Fo himself.
Eduardo proved to have an extraordinary ability to speak without words and
alternate narration and silences. He did that with an incredible naturalness based
on a formidable dialectic between face and masque, where the author-actor cre-
ated a full harmony with the character, a relationship which swung between
detachment and participation. This was a ‘game’ which made spectators laugh
about that character and feel emotionally involved with the drama.
Like Pinter’s characters, Eduardo’s too used monologues to communicate with
the audience. Passing from a monologue to lack of communication does not take
much, and underlines the rejection of those relationships which, in conventional
conversation, have become pretence, as is the case with those comedies dealing
with critical social changes, Questi fantasmi! (1946), Le voci di dentro (1948), Mia
famiglia (1955). So you pass from Zi’ Nicola’s fireworking code of communica-
tion in The Voices Within to the instrumental dumbness of Alberto Stigliano
in Mia famiglia. In the former, Michele, the porter of the building where the
story takes place, utters a most telling phrase, “Mo’ si sono imbrogliate le lingue,”
adding, “Ecco che la notte ti fai la fetenzìa di sogni” (Engl. Now languages are
mixed up. This is why you have very bad dreams.) (De Filippo 1973, 354). This
happens just because the voices within and outside no longer find correspond-
ence. He is a narrator, he speaks to himself, because he speaks even when he
thinks it is useless, since nobody listens in a world of deaf people: “gente che parla
cumme fosse muta” (Engl. “people who speak as if they were dumb”). But this
sort of monologue in dialogue reached its contrasting apex between the art of
narration and that of silence in Gli esami non finiscono mai (1974). It is here that
11 Italian original: Napoli è un paese curioso, un teatro antico, sempre apierto. / Ce nasce
gente ca, senza cuncierto, / scenne p’ ’e strate e sape recità.
Eduardo realised what could be foreseen in some silent scenes in comedies like
Mia famiglia. He was convinced that a good actor could act without speaking,
which is what happens in the last act of the comedy where the protagonist, Gug-
lielmo Speranza (the name ironically meaning “William Hope”) loses all hope
and trust in mankind. In his old age, he locks himself at home and refuses any
contact with the outside world by which he feels disgusted. Then he decides not
to utter a word anymore, closing himself into the shell of silence, because no-
body likes listening and there is no reciprocal respect whatsoever. When he dies,
against his will, his relatives dress him like a strolling player, instead of arranging
a simple and conventional funeral. We see him leave the stage (i.e. the world) in
his coffin waiving mockingly and affectedly goodbye to the audience. However
incidental it may be, it is interesting to remark that for the first and last time,
Eduardo makes comments and even explains the meaning of his play to the au-
dience, thus going back to his master’s conception of theatre, that of Pirandello,
where the protagonists interact with the audience. Actually, that was virtually
the last time Eduardo appeared on the stage, at the Teatro Quirino in Rome in
April 1974. He proved once more what a great artist he was by expressing himself
by gesture and silence, thus managing to say more and even better than what
he could have expressed in words. Didn’t Pinter almost die on the stage acting
Beckett’s play Krapp’s Last Tape?
Conclusion
Particularly in the second part of this chapter, I tried to show how much Ed-
uardo and Pinter had in common either consciously or unconsciously. It is a fact
that Eduardo’s plays were most successful in Britain, even when they were staged
in Italian. Again, this proves that what counts is the sound of the words, gesture,
and above all, what is not said.
It is interesting to remark that the De Filippo family were all fascinated by
Pinter’s theatrical world. In 1976 Peppino, Eduardo’s brother, asked Pinter for
permission to stage The Caretaker which was televised the following year. Pint-
er allowed Peppino to Italianize any English references. The play was a great
success, worth the challenge taken by Peppino since Pinter’s themes were more
in line with Eduardo’s. Yet his natural bony masked face helped him to show
a denied dignity. Similarly, Eduardo’s son, Luca, an outstanding actor himself,
approached Pinter to get out of his father’s repertory, tried his hand most suc-
cessfully at Pinter’s The Lover.
The close link between Eduardo and Pinter and the appreciation of Pinter in
Italy was acknowledged by Fo, among others:
50 Nick Ceramella
“An extraordinary person for his humanness and modesty,” thus Dario Fo, he too a
man of the theatre and Nobel Prize Winner, recalls Harold Pinter, who passed away in
London yesterday. He is joined by Pinter’s friend and interpreter Paolo Bonacelli, who
remembers “his helpfulness, kindness without any snootiness, when I approached him
the first time, after I had acted in No Man’s Land.” Likewise, his translator, Alessandra
Serra, underlines “the honesty and loyalty of the man, once you had conquered him, the
same qualities which ignited his indignation for every injustice. He went mad before
violence and deceit and went out to demonstrate, just as he did till the end with his
political initiatives.” “We were quite similar in that and our theatres sprung up from the
same reasons of denunciation against militarism, war, supremacy of economic interests.
That’s what we talked about when we met the first time, of how a certain capitalism had
reduced today’s world.” “When we met up, I used to talk about his theatre, how I inter-
preted it, but he changed subject and talked about politics, asked what was happening
in Italy. He got excited, while drinking, like last time in an Italian restaurant, his beloved
Italian white wines, just French or Italian and ice-cold.”12 (Petroni 2008)
Similarly, the connection between Eduardo and Pinter was noticed by The
Teatro Politeama “Siracusa” in Reggio Calabria where the 2008-09 season was
dedicated to both of them. Within the same programme, the Laboratorio Tea-
trale ‘Le Nozze’ of the Mediterranean University in Reggio Calabria, organised
an international symposium “Harold Pinter and the Masques of Politics” and
offered to their public two plays by Pinter, Party Time and Mountain Language.
12 Italian original: “Una persona straordinaria per l’umanità e la modestia”, così Dario
Fo, anche lui uomo di teatro e premio Nobel, ricorda Harold Pinter, scomparso ieri a
Londra, e gli fanno eco Paolo Bonacelli, suo interprete e amico, che ne ricorda “la dis-
ponibilità, la gentilezza priva di supponenza, quando lo avvicinai la prima volta, dopo
aver recitato ‘Terra di nessuno’”, come la sua traduttrice Alessandra Serra, che sottolinea
“l’onestà e la lealtà dell’uomo, una volta che lo avevi conquistato, le stesse qualità che lo
accendevano d’indignazione per ogni ingiustizia. Davanti alla violenza e l’inganno per-
deva il lume della ragione e scendeva subito in piazza, come ha fatto sino all’ultimo con
i suoi interventi politici”. “In questo ci somigliavamo molto e il nostro teatro – racconta
ancora Fo – nasceva dalle stesse ragioni di denuncia contro il militarismo, la guerra,
la supremazia degli interessi economici. Di questo abbiamo parlato quando l’ho con-
osciuto, di come un certo capitalismo ha ridotto il mondo d’oggi”. Del resto aveva detto
lui stesso nel 2005 che non avrebbe più scritto teatro, per dedicarsi all’impegno politico.
“Quando ci incontravamo, io gli parlavo del suo teatro, di quel che vi leggevo, ma lui
spostava il discorso sulla politica, chiedeva cosa stesse accadendo in Italia, si accalorava,
bevendo, come l’ultima volta in un ristorante italiano, i suoi amati vini bianchi, solo
francesi o italiani e ghiacciati…” (Petroni 2010).
References
Bensky, L. 1966. The Art of Theater No. 3, Interview with Harold Pinter. The
Paris Review, Fall, No. 39. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4351/
the-art-of-theater-no-3-harold-pinter.
Billington, M., ed. 2007. Harold Pinter. London: Faber and Faber.
Burton, H. 2007. Working With Pinter, documentary (shown on British televi-
sion’s More 4), Feb 2007.
De Filippo, E. 1973. Le voci di dentro. In I Capolavori di Eduardo, Vol. Two.
Torino: Einaudi.
–, 1973. Natale in casa Cupiello. In I Capolavori di Eduardo, Vol. Two. Torino:
Einaudi.
–, 1974. Mia famiglia. Milano: Einaudi.
–, 1976. ’E pparole. In Le poesie di Eduardo, Torino: Einaudi.
Fo, D. 1992. Fabulazzo. Milano: Kaos Edizioni.
Garner, S.B. Jr. 2008. Raiding the Inarticulate: Pinter and the politics of silence.
Cycnos, Volume 12, n°1.
Hall, P. Directing the Plays of Harold Pinter. In Peter Raby ed. The Cambridge
Companion to Harold Pinter. Cambridge: CUP: 160-169.
Petroni, P. 2008. Harold Pinter: da Bonacelli a Fo, Gli amici italiani. Rome: ANSA
Press Agency. http://www.luigiboschi.it/node/18313.
Pinter, H. 1976. Plays One. London: Methuen.
–, 1979. Plays Two. London: Methuen.
–, 1998. Harold Pinter Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics 1948-1998. London:
Faber.
–, 2000. Celebration. London: Faber and Faber.
Shakespeare, W. 2011. Othello. London: Arden Shakespeare.
Viviani, R. 1969. Eduardo De Filippo. Il Mattino illustrato, XIX, n. 35, 1936; now
in Storia del teatro napoletano, Napoli: Guida.
Pia Vittoria Colombo
Chapter Three
The Italian Anatomy of Pinter: With their
Pinter’s Anatomy, Italian Contemporary
Playwrights ricci/forte Pay Their Dues
to the British Nobel Laureate
Introduction: Pinter, Italy and the Italian Stages

Italy and the Italian audience have always appreciated Harold Pinter’s work.
His plays were translated into Italian almost immediately, and the first critical
monograph about his writing style, edited by the famous Italian theatre critic,
Guido Davico Bonino (Il teatro di Harold Pinter), was published relatively early,
in 1977. The first book containing a selection of Pinter’s works was published
by Einaudi, Turin in 1972 under the title of Teatro. It contains all the works as
published soon after their first staging by the Italian theatre magazine Sipario
(Bompiani, Milan and Rome) in translations by Romeo De’ Baggi, Laura Del
Bono and Elio Nissim: Il compleanno (The Birthday Party), La stanza (The
Room), Il calapranzi (The Dumb Waiter), Il guardiano (The Caretaker), Un
leggero malessere (A Slight Ache), Una serata fuori (A Night Out), La collezione
(The Collection), L’amante (The Lover), I nani (The Dwarfs), Il ritorno a casa (The
Homecoming), Notte (Night). Sipario also published all the first reviews of Pint-
er’s plays both in London and in Italy. In the 1970s and 80s, Einaudi published
Pinter’s works singly, edited by the Italian theatre scholar Guido Davico Bonino
for its theatre series Teatro.
In 1994, a new translation of Pinter’s plays was commissioned from Ales-
sandra Serra, who eventually became the playwright’s official Italian translator.
Therefore, an updated collection of translations of Pinter’s plays in two volumes
was published in 1996 in Turin by Einaudi. They appeared as Teatro. Volume I
(Il compleanno, La stanza, Il calapranzi, La serra, Il guardiano) and Teatro. Vol-
ume II (L’amante, Il ritorno a casa, Vecchi Tempi, Terra di nessuno, Tradimenti, Il
bicchiere della staffa, Il linguaggio della montagna, Party Time). Together with the
single texts of each of Pinter’s subsequent plays, Einaudi also published a collec-
tion of Pinter’s sketches, Prove d’autore (2001), the novel I nani (1993), and the
scripts La donna del tenente francese (1982) and Proust (1987).
54 Pia Vittoria Colombo
The shorter plays, edited by the Italian reviewer Rodolfo di Giammarco, were
published in the collection Dialoghi e monologhi by Gremese in Rome (1992).
Pinter’s poems first appeared in Poesie, edited by Roberto Sanesi, published by
Gramese in Rome (1992); these were later published by Einaudi with the title
Poesie d’amore di silenzio e di guerra (2006).
The first production of a Pinter play in an Italian theatre dates to 1962. It was
a daring adaptation of A Night Out staged in a very tiny Milanese playhouse
that casted the then young, famous Italian actresses Paola Borboni and Marisa
Fabbri1. Back then in Italy it was the dawn of alternative theatre, when more and
more brave directors and alternative companies dared to try the production of
new plays from abroad. Thus, Pinter enjoyed the growing trend for absurdism on
Italian stages and the revolution that was destabilizing mainstream conventions
worldwide. Ever since the 1960s, when the playwright was in his prime, in Italy
we have staged scores of successful productions of his works – although at first
only in fringe theatres. Apart from the novelty of his style and the echo of his
reputation, what made the choice of Pinter’s plays even more inviting for Italian
directors and producers was certainly the low number of characters and the few
props needed for their mise en scène (the two plays that have been most con-
stantly revived and produced in Italy are The Dumb Waiter and The Lover). But
Pinter’s road to success and notoriety in Italy is somewhat ironically linked to a
succèss de scandal, as the French say. What opened the doors of bigger Italian
theatres to Pinter and drew the attention of academia to his work, thus establish-
ing once and for all his fortune, was the ado caused around the 1973 production
of Old Times by the famous director, Luchino Visconti (Tanto tempo fa, Teatro
Argentina Roma, with Umberto Orsini, Valentina Cortese and Adriana Asti,
scenes by Mario Garbuglia, text unauthorizedly translated by the dramatist and
critic Gerardo Guerrieri), and from which Pinter eventually distanced himself.
Billington also gives an account of this event:
In May 1973 Pinter became embroiled in an extraordinary public row with one of the
great gods of Italian film, theatre and opera, Luchino Visconti, an aristocrat with a
whim of iron, over his Teatro di Roma production of Old Times. Initially, the row was
provoked by the theatre’s use of a translation that took liberties with the text and that
Pinter’s Italian agent Laura Del Bono considered “unactable”. But the real problem lay
with Visconti’s violently unorthodox production. He mounted the play in a boxing ring
in the centre of the theatre’s stalls. Pinter’s famous silences were punctuated by beats on a
1 For more information, see the special issue of the Italian theatre magazine Hystrio
dedicated to Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett. It features the article by R. Canziani,
Ne ho scritte ventinove. Non bastano?
The Italian Anatomy of Pinter 55
gong. Anna and Deeley’s lyrical context of memories became an after-supper sing-song
accompanied by a pianist who carried on playing while Deeley described going to see
Odd Man Out. Worst of all, from Pinter’s viewpoint, the relationship between Anna and
Kate became explicitly lesbian. On 11 May Pinter held a press conference in Rome and
stated the following: “I have never heard of or witnessed a production such as this which
is totally indifferent to the intentions of the author or which introduces such grave and
shocking distortions and which I consider a travesty. (Billington 2007, 237)
Nevertheless, it is striking how the Italian public and performing arts in-
dustry acknowledged Pinter’s skill as a writer and the peculiarity of his effec-
tive style much more readily than many of their colleagues in English speaking
countries. At the end of the 70s and in the 80s, Pinter’s texts were deliberately
chosen by the greatest young directors (like Toni Bertorelli, Giuseppe Patroni
Griffi, Guido de Monticelli, Antonio Calenda, Antonio Sixty, Andrée Ruth
Shammah) and actors (Giampiero Bianchi, Valerio Binasco, Umberto Orsini,
Sergio Castellitto, Iaia Forte, Ilaria Occhini, Anna Bonaiuto, Greta Scacchi, Lau-
ra Marinoni), as his style and characters were perceived as challenging, and thus
as the perfect texts to prove their actorial and creative skills. Some noteworthy
productions included the remarkable first 1976 production of Terra di Nessuno
(No Man’s Land, with Giorgio de Lullo and Romolo Valli in Eliseo Theatre in
Rome, with a translation made for the purpose by Cesare Garboli); nor can we
forget to cite the many Pinter plays staged over the years by Carlo Cecchi, or the
acting of Paolo Bonacelli, who has interpreted most of Pinter’s characters on the
Italian stage. Moreover, the Italian public also grew accustomed to Pinter’s thea-
tre thanks to the clever broadcasting of a series of famous author productions
of his plays on the third channel, the cultural network, of Italian public TV in
the mid 70s. Therefore, it is not surprising that Italy granted the British Nobel
laureate so many honors (such as two lauree honoris causa, or the Premio Eu-
ropa per il teatro in 2006), considering the bond Pinter felt for the country, his
recurring visits (in 1997 Pinter himself directed the first Ashes to Ashes for the
Palermo Festival del Novecento, and he also advised a production of La Serra –
The Hothouse with Carlo Cecchi for the Turin Teatro Stabile) and the many
allusions to Italian landscape and culture that he included in his own poetic
imagery. In this regard, the importance of the role played by Venice in the plot
and in the thematic and structural development of Pinter’s renowned Betrayal
is abundantly clear.
Soon after hearing the sad news of his passing away, many important Italian
theatre directors and producers committed to celebrating Pinter’s work by
dedicating part of their theatres’ upcoming seasons to commemorating the
importance of his contribution to the contemporary world scene. Take, for
example, the 2009/10 “Pinter e dintorni” season of the Milanese theatre Franco
Parenti, which consisted of a high-quality selection of four plays from the Pint-
er repertoire. Among them, an interesting Dumb Waiter with the actress Ivana
Monti playing the part of the puzzled, inquisitive Gus, and a very lucky produc-
tion of Betrayal starring Roberto Benigni’s prominent wife, Nicoletta Braschi,
that continued its tour on many other important Italian stages2.
2009 also saw the project “Living Things Harold Pinter, Contemporary and
Classical Formats for a Master of the Theatre”, a 3-week recognition and cel-
ebration dedicated to Harold Pinter by the directors of the Italian theatre CSS
Teatro stabile di innovazione del Friuli Venezia Giulia3. Most of the project
consisted of 10 brand new productions of his foremost plays; among which
particularly outstanding has been Cesare Lievi’s touching staging of Ashes to
Ashes.4
Re-proposing Pinter in the Italian contingency

Particularly relevant to the topic of reception outside the Anglophone con-
text of Pinter’s literary heritage were the original productions presented in the
“Pinter Post” section of the “Living Things Harold Pinter” project which were all
designed to explore precisely the playwright’s impact on subsequent playwriting
and the significance of this legacy. In the words of the project’s organizer,
the Italian Pinter scholar Roberto Canziani, they “wanted to study, but also pro-
mote, the weight of Pinter’s vitality in spite of his passing” (2010), and indeed, in
the program one can read the following:
Thanks to his acting experience and acquaintance with Shakespeare’s language, he
has given so much to the XX century theatre that his teaching could only push to-
day’s new artists to follow in his very footsteps, taking suggestions and elements from
his style, inserting them into new contexts and filtering through other media and
2 Other productions part of the “Pinter e Dintorni” season were: L’amante (The Lover),
with the famous Italian actress Anna Galiena and directed by the creative director of
Teatro Parenti Andrée Ruth Shammah, Una specie di Alaska (A Kind of Alaska) and
Ceneri alle ceneri (Ashes to Ashes) by the director Mario Morini, who died before stag-
ing the play. For more information (in Italian), see http://www.teatrofrancoparenti.it/
pinter-e-dintorni (accessed 2 April 2012).
3 For more information, see the program (in Italian), see http://www.cssudine.it/spet-
tacoli_scheda.php/ID=450, http://www.cssudine.it/media/spettacoli/450_3768_doc-
umenti.pdf (accessed 2 April 2012).
4 For information and press release (in Italian), see http://www.cssudine.it/spettacoli_
scheda.php/ID=472 (accessed 2 April 2012).
different languages the quality of all that has since become famous as the Pinteresque.5
(Canziani 2010)
For this project, named after Pinter’s description of his works as “living things”,
wanting to crown the offer of shows provided in the series of shows investigat-
ing the “Pinter Post”, Canziani asked the then budding Italian duo ricci/forte to
write something inspired by Pinter’s own themes and style but at the same time
in keeping with that specific kind of provocative, explicit fringe playwriting that
has made them both famous and much debated in Italy. The intention was to
give them as much free rein as possible so as to obtain an original product that
could prove how much ricci/forte style benefited from working on Pinter and
that might be considered as living evidence of Pinter’s influence on younger play-
wrights despite all kinds of distances. This brought about ricci/forte’s own Pinter’s
Anatomy, a special play in many respects: a play where the actors outnumber the
public, where the public is thrust forward by the actors through a claustropho-
bic maze of narrow rooms to be directly confronted with the cruel, raw features
of the violent action happening on stage. Moreover, throughout the laconic 35
minutes of the mise en scène of Pinter’s Anatomy, the audience is forced to deal
with the nudity of the actors, the filthy language and the harsh noises it is made to
hear, as well as with the controversial themes that are closely examined.
Examined, yes, or even dissected, anatomized. These are all pertinent words
to describe the outcome of their creative efforts. Indeed, in Pinter’s Anatomy it
looks as if ricci/forte committed themselves to performing a daring post-mor-
tem of Pinter’s style, which is, by the way, precisely what they eventually happen
to provide through such a startling piece. They have taken bits and pieces of the
playwright’s imagery and techniques and used them as a starting point to go
deep into the flesh of Pinter’s plays, as if they wanted to pick clean what were the
bones of his unique kind of drama, and to provide (thanks to this very specific
process of examination which is, as the title states, a sort of Anatomy) their own
specific analysis of contemporary societal issues and of the consequences of so-
ciety’s paradoxes for us human beings.
Questioned about the aims of their work, and the extent to which they share
Pinter’s quest for a theatre of social criticism, a theatre that calls all sorts of dull
conventions into question, they answered:
We are not aiming at a destabilizing theatre tout court. /…/ We are working on en-
couraging a sociological debate on the palpable difficulties of everyday living in a
5 All translations from Italian in this chapter are provided by P. Colombo unless other-
wise specified.
post-industrial society like our own that is going adrift. /…/ Miscomprehension
and shallowness of habitual life, have made us stubbornly willing to chew on themes
and codes that can provoke positive criticism against that current anthropological
chasm that affects us all.6 (Ricci and Forte 2012)
On the other hand, why they decided to take up Canziani’s challenge, the
reasons motivating their choice to reinvent Pinter through a new piece and their
modus operandi were explained as follows:
We were called upon to create a personal viewpoint and took the opportunity, having
at length been attracted by Pinter’s political value and the atemporal suspensions with
which he played in his works. /…/ Considering the differences between our meth-
odological approach and Pinter’s, and in the face of the constraints due to copyright
issues, it was completely natural for us to face the journey [through the texts] in com-
plete expressive autonomy. The choice of perspective, as we have stated it with the
play title, was that of a recognition: an analysis of narratives declined through a hyper-
contemporary dimension, picking up on social/ethical issues and re-proposing them
with our personal grammar.7 (Ricci and Forte 2012)
ricci/forte: Pinter’s Post

Trained as actors at the renowned Italian National Academy of Dramatic Arts
Silvio D’Amico, ricci/forte studied script writing in New York with Edward Albee.
After some time working as scriptwriters for Italian TV, it was not until the early
2000s that they came back to their first love: theatre. The whole of their produc-
tion is characterized by a set of compelling, provocative and award-winning texts
6 The answers from the Ricci and Forte interview (2012) were translated from Ital-
ian. The original answer: “Non vogliamo semplicemente destabilizzare /…/. Quello che
continuiamo ad erigere è un dibattito sociologico, sulle difficoltà concrete di vissuto in
una società postindustriale e alla deriva come nelle contingenze attuali /…/. Il frain-
tendimento, la superficialità di uno sguardo disabituato all’ovvio, amplificano la volontà
ostinata di masticare temi e codici che suscitino una critica costruttiva di un baratro
antropologico dal quale nessuno può sentirsi chiamato fuori”.
7 The original answer in Italian: “Siamo stati chiamati a creare uno sguardo personale
e abbiamo afferrato l’occasione dal momento che di Pinter ci attraeva da sempre la va-
lenza politica e le sospensioni atemporali con cui giocava nella sua drammaturgia. Con-
siderando il personale approccio metodologico alla creazione e dal momento che i diritti
dell’opera teatrale di Pinter presentavano diversi vincoli di rappresentazione, è stato del
tutto naturale affrontare il viaggio in totale autonomia espressiva. La scelta prospet-
tica, indicata poi con il titolo consegnato al lavoro, è stata quella di una ricognizione:
un’analisi di temi declinati attraverso una dimensione iper_contemporanea, andando a
setacciare disagi socioetici e restituendoli con la nostra personale grammatica”.
that hint at Marlowe, Strindberg, Ibsen and the ancient Greek tragedies, as well
as at the Theatre of the Absurd. They have, however, a completely new spin, thus
resulting in something utterly original. The themes of their works are meant to
stress the tragedy of the gap between the individual and society through what has
by now become a trademark blend of explicit language combining myths, liter-
ary tradition and idyllic accents with popular culture, shattered taboos, shocking
brutal images and degraded everyday reality. Such a unique blend, sharing the
same urgency as the British contemporary In-Yer-Face Theatre (Sierz 2001) but
at the same time being inextricably, and sadly, plunged into the recent Italian
chronicle, has become the main feature of most of their acclaimed plays, such
as the contemporary epic Troia’s Discount, or the painful and harrowing Maca-
damia Nut Brittle, which toured Slovenia in August 2011with a show held in
Ljubljana at the Stara mestna elektrarna Bunker.8
In Pinter’s Anatomy the ricci/forte playwriting duo has characteristically
torn apart the unit of Pinter’s corpus to pull out the semiotic core and reuse
it in a completely independent, new textual configuration of its own. Indeed,
even someone perfectly well read in Pinter plays and style will struggle to find
the thread of inspiration and train of thought behind the play. Pinter is there,
nonetheless. Despite the fact that he may seem to have been somehow misrepre-
sented by the new text’s fragmented scenes that stage only a Christmas tree and
a morgue table, and by the clusters of stream-of-consciousness dialogues and
monologues referring, in between silences, to things as random as Facebook,
Britney Spears and Japanese manga, upon closer inspection, it is impossible not
to recognize how extensive are the hints at Pinter and his plays in ricci/forte:
Our work was not developed from associations between Pinter’s works and how to con-
vert them into Pinter’s Anatomy. The substance is less palpable, made from a total im-
mersion in Pinterian world and then, like Argonauts, to walk on the asphalt with the
weight and attention derived from the urgencies hidden behind his and our writing,
different in terms of style and prospects but sharing identical preoccupations with our
future.9 (Ricci and Forte 2012)
8 For more information, see http://www.bunker.si/eng/macadamia-nut-brittle (accessed

2 April 2012).
9 The original answer in Italian: “il lavoro non si è sviluppato su associazioni tra comme-
die di Pinter e come convertirle nell’Anatomia. Il tessuto è più impalpabile, fatto di im-
mersione totale nel mondo pinteriano e poi, come argonauti, calpestare il proprio asfalto
con quel peso e quell’attenzione derivata dalle urgenze che si nascondevano dietro la sua
scrittura e la nostra, differente per stile e prospettive ma condivisa per identiche preoc-
cupazioni sulle nostre sorti future”.
Pinter’s Anatomy consists of 3 episodes connected by the same underlying

themes that virtually imply their thematic and linguistic dependence on Pinter
in different ways. It is not just the use of reverse chronology in structuring the
play, or the way the actors, who outnumber the public, outrage the latter with
societal taboos and, in so doing, oblige them to call their habits and consciences
into question. It is also the way the four characters of Pinter’s Anatomy, once
made to go over their past, their beliefs and their life experience (just like, for
instance, Davies in The Caretaker, or Stanley in The Birthday Party) cannot get
over the torture and, instead of asserting their identities in the game of changing
roles represented throughout the play, end up broken by the desperate attempt to
defend their world. Moreover, ricci/forte chose to write their play precisely about
those topics of Pinter’s that are the most sensitive:
The themes of memory and identity have always been urgent ones in our expressive
practice. In Pinter’s Anatomy, we were obviously forced in the direction of the mystifica-
tion of Reality, of the many truths and the reconstruction of the subjective past so dear
to Pinter, explicated in his Night [that we have rewritten in our play]. /…/ In general, we
like to investigate deceit, all the lies people say in order to be accepted, to cope. It’s in
the victim/persecutor pair that we are closest to Pinterian themes. Pinter’s early work,
which criticizes the bourgeois couple, right through to its last phase, aimed decisively at
taking a political bite in first person, provided our Anatomy with its initial inspiration.10
(Ricci and Forte 2012)
Thus, the unifying theme of Pinter’s Anatomy can indeed be seen again in the
continuous implicit reference to such eternal human concerns as time, liberty,
violence and abuse of power. In contrast to Pinter’s plays, however, this time we
are miles and years away from the reality of the 1960s and 1970s in England: the
allusion justifying ricci/forte’s piece is instead a much more contemporary and
topical hint at Italian politics and, in particular, at a recent news item about a
young Italian prisoner who died in prison after being abused and tortured by his
10 The original answer: “Il tema identitario è da sempre urgenza nella nostra pratica es-
pressiva. In questo caso, con Pinter’s Anatomy ci obbligava la direzione nella mistifica-
zione del Reale, delle tante verità e della ricostruzione del Passato soggettivo, tanto cara
a Pinter, esplicitata poi nel suo Notturno [che abbiamo riscritto nella nostra opera]. In
generale, sono gli inganni, le bugie sussurrate per essere accettati quelle che ci incurio-
sisce approfondire. E’ proprio sul binomio vittima/carnefice che ci avviciniamo di più
al tema pinteriano. In tutto il suo primo teatro, quello di critica alla coppia borghese,
fino ad arrivare alla sua ultima fase, virata decisamente ad un morso politico in prima
persona, che la nostra Anatomia prende lo spunto iniziale.
guards, or at the escapist attempt of Italian youth to find in a foreign utopia some
kind of rescue from the current economic crisis:
For us, Pinter became like a springboard from which to dive into the sea of interrogatives
which we, as a creative duo, sew upon our bodies at each new avenue of investigation
[to which we bring our works]. The theme of the violence around and that of a stand-
ardizing acceptance to the detriment of one’s personal matrix has taken root with us in
the fragmentation of a debate on standardization and border areas where hundreds of
people die whilst killing their dreams in the search for a foreign and welcoming nation
which will always make them feel just that, foreign, though they may be willing to sur-
render their fingerprints, real or not.11 (Ricci and Forte 2012)
The aim of the “Living Things Harold Pinter” project was to consider the scope
of Pinter’s literary heritage and his impact as a writer on subsequent authors.
Without him as a bond between the Theatre of the Absurd and today’s hyper-
realistic postmodern drama, we may not have had such politically explicit texts
as, for instance, British In-Yer-Face pieces.
In Italy the trend for theatre writing is still mainly all for tradition. We have
daring theatre directors, but ricci/forte are among the few real Italian authors
who can hold their own on the global stage. It is specifically for their style, play-
ing on gender fusion and linguistic, artistic cross-contamination, that from the
semantics of music the definition “Mash-up Theatre” was coined to describe
their distinctive kind of postmodern writing, a unique style that calls inherited
ideas into question and adds a twist on literary influences, mixing different reg-
isters and different sources in its linguistic experimentation.
In other plays of theirs, ricci/forte set their creative goal of reinventing Greek
myths and hinting at literature classics that are cues closer to the Italian audi-
ence’s collective imagination by mixing them with a variety of heterogeneous
pop material, so as to result in texts close to their own peculiar idea of theatre.
Likewise, in Pinter’s Anatomy they started from Pinter’s texts and, seeing them as
classics of the theatre, used their elements, themes and creative solutions as their
own language to communicate to the public their own meditation on eternal
11 The original answer: “Pinter, è diventato per noi come un trampolino dal quale tuf-
farsi nel mare di interrogativi che come ensemble ci cuciamo addosso ad ogni nuovo
binario di indagine [a cui portiamo i nostri lavori]. Il tema della violenza fuori e
quello dell’accettazione omologante, a scapito della propria matrice personale, con noi
ha preso piede nella frantumazione di un dibattito sull’omologazione e sulle zone di
frontiera dove centinaia di persone muoiono uccidendo i loro sogni alla ricerca di una
Nazione accogliente e straniera. Che li farà sentire sempre tali, nonostante siano pronti
a venire meno alle loro impronte digitali, reali e non.”
issues, as well as to deliver their critical and subjective outlook on the complex-
ity of a modern life where healthy living becomes more and more difficult, and
where relationships are empty and men helplessly suffer their loneliness.
By rewriting Pinter through their own Pinter’s Anatomy, ricci/forte contribut-
ed a great deal to granting the British playwright’s texts new life and incisiveness
because they continued his project to use theatre for awakening the public
consciousness – a project with which, they agree:
There’s plenty of it in specific works such as Pinter’s Anatomy. But, as stated previously,
it’s not so much in terms of style as in terms of themes dealt with. The use of space we
make would surprise Pinter, who was instead so careful in reconstructing bourgeois
settings infernal in their precision, so as to attack them from inside. We take other direc-
tions, determined by a short, energetic and sussultatory breath, distant from the silences
of the placated slowness of Pinter’s worlds. Besides this specific play, the rest of our pro-
duction diverges from British textual tastes in both methodology and style. We must not
forget that English theatre focuses mainly on the spoken word. Of an Italian influence
and different traditions, we work much on the group and on the bio-ethical/physical
aspects of a creative ensemble, where the text is just one of the many derivations.12 (Ricci
and Forte 2012)
In fact, even if the guiding horizon of Pinter’s Anatomy is the different here
and now of the Italian present, and the society in question is our own, the influ-
ence of Pinter’s modus operandi on ricci/forte is evident. It is also an extreme,
allusive and cynical play dealing with varied human-related core issues, such as
identity, ambiguity, memory, violence, life meaning and politics that violently
confront the public with what is happening onstage to push them to react to the
status quo of their routines and change their lives.
Pinter is one of the contemporary authors studied in almost all theatre courses. That’s
how it went for us. The structural analysis of his texts, his bourgeois settings contrast-
ed with disturbing accents and contaminations gave us food for thought, even before
12 The original answer: “In lavori come Pinter’s Anatomy, ovviamente ce n’è molta. Ma,
come già detto, non tanto dal procedimento stilistico quanto quello tematico. Il lavoro
sullo spazio operato da noi avrebbe fatto sussultare Pinter, così attento invece a ricostru-
ire ambienti borghesi infernali nella loro precisione, per attaccarli da dentro. Le nostre
direzioni sono altre, determinate anche da un respiro corto, energetico, sussultorio così
lontano dai silenzi e dalla pacatezza di molti mondi pinteriani. A parte questo spet-
tacolo specifico, il resto della nostra produzione si allontana, per metodologia e stile, da
un gusto britannico testuale. Non dobbiamo dimenticarci che tutta la drammaturgia
inglese si incentra principalmente sulla parola. Noi, di influenza italica e di tradizioni
differenti, lavoriamo molto sul gruppo, sulle valenze biotiche /fisiche di un ensemble in
cui il testo è solo una delle tante derivazioni.”
embarking on the journey made with the support of the CSS Udine Theatre. An author’s
classic stature can be recognized by his capacity to speak to generations distant from his
own. Before working on Pinter, we considered him an author associated with English
society in his own era. In our work of recognition, we have highlighted a substratum
still strongly relevant today, abstracted from the usual whisky and pears imagery of the
many rather rhetorical Italian representations of his works to which we have become
accustomed.13 (Ricci and Forte 2012)
For all this, Pinter’s Anatomy is clearly to be read both as a tribute to a highly
esteemed author and like a successful creative attempt that results in a compel-
ling original play. With it, ricci/forte pay their dues to a master whose ideas they
shared, and who finally made theatre the centre stage for a consideration of
modern life’s paradoxes, and whose texts incisively question how men ultimately
cope with them.
Conclusion
We cannot know if Pinter would have appreciated ricci/forte Pinter’s Anatomy.
Although there is the possibility that he would have disowned the liberties taken
by ricci/forte, just as he distanced himself from Luchino Visconti’s distorted pro-
duction of Old Times, in my view, it would have been a pity if it had gone by un-
noticed by Pinter scholars outside Italy. The aim of this piece of research was not
to go deep into the question of the theatrical and stylistic quality of the ricci/forte
play, neither was I as its author interested in saying whether their attempt at writ-
ing a completely new text of their own inspired by the Nobel laureate’s themes
and style proved successful. Finally, I share the same idea the duo expressed: “we
do not know how much of Pinter is there in our Pinter’s Anatomy”. Like them, I
also think that the value of their work is to be found in that common intent that
13 The original answer: “Pinter è uno degli autori contemporanei che si studiano in qua-
lunque corso di drammaturgia planetaria. E’ stato così anche per noi. L’analisi strut-
turale dei suoi testi, il gusto nell’incrinare gli affreschi borghesi con contaminazioni e
accenti disturbanti sono stati motivo di riflessione per noi, ancora prima di procedere
al viaggio sostenuto col favore del CSS. La classicità di un autore si riconosce nella sua
capacità di parlare a generazioni lontane da quella in cui si è sviluppato. Prima di la-
vorarci sopra, consideravamo Pinter un autore molto abbottonato al suo tempo e ai
costumi inglesi. Con la nostra ricognizione abbiamo evidenziato che esiste un substrato
che, sfrondato dall’apparato iconografico di whisky e filo di perle, al quale ci hanno
abituato le edizione retoriche italiane delle sue pieces, conserva una profonda adesione
al Presente”.
they share with Pinter. The reason behind their work lies in “the need to wonder
about still unsolved issues”14 (Ricci and Forte 2012).
By dedicating their work to Pinter, ricci/forte have implicitly breathed new life
into Pinter’s plays, admitting and celebrating their status as classic texts. Thus,
I would like to promote its translation and staging internationally, so that with
its profundity it could serve as food for thought for a wider public, and with its
likeness to the creative process behind Harold Pinter’s same texts, it could con-
tribute to our debates as a proof of the value of their potential even in different
cultural contexts.
References
Allegri, L. 1993. La drammaturgia da Diderot a Beckett. Bari: Laterza.
Bertinetti, P. 1992. Il teatro inglese del Novecento. Torino: Einaudi.
–, 2001. La scena inglese: il più grande spettacolo del mondo. In Storia del teatro
moderno e contemporaneo ed. R. Alonge, G. Davico Bonino, Turin: Einaudi.
Bevilacqua, A. and F. Maggi, ed. 2009a. Living Things Harold Pinter. Udine: CSS
Udine. http://www.cssudine.it/media/spettacoli/450_3768_documenti.pdf. Ac-
cessed 2 Apr 2012.
–, 2009b. Pinter’s Anatomy. Production at the CSS Udine Press Releases. Udine:
CSS Udine. http://www.cssudine.it/spettacoli_scheda.php/ID=482. Accessed
2 Apr 2012.
Billington, B. 2007. The Life and Work of Harold Pinter. London: Faber.
Canziani, R. and G. Capitta. 2005. Harold Pinter Scena e Potere. Milano: Garzanti.
Canziani, R. and L. Codelli. 1989. Harold Pinter. Trieste: Quaderni del teatro
stabile del Friuli Venezia Giulia.
Canziani, R. 2006. Ne ho scritte ventinove. Non bastano?, Hystrio, no. 1, Jan-
Mar: 2-6.
–, 2010. Anatomie per Harold Pinter. Alcune osservazioni a proposito di Pint-
er’s Anatomy. In Mash-up Theater – ricci/forte. Roma: Editoria e Spettacolo.
119-133.
Davico Bonino, G. 1977. Il teatro di Pinter. Lecce: Martano Edizioni.
14 The original quotes: “Non sappiamo quanto ci sia di Pinter nel nostro Pinter’s Anato-
my”; “l’urgenza di porsi domande di fronte a problemi rimasti irrisolti”.
Pinter, H. 2005. Teatro. (ed. and transl. A. Serra) Torino: Einaudi.

Ricci S. and G. Forte. 2012. Interview with Stefano Ricci and Gianni Forte, con-
ducted by P. Colombo in Milan on 14 Jan 2012.
Ricci S. and G. Forte (ed.). 2012a. ricci/forte home page. http://www.ricciforte.
com. Accessed 2 Apr 2012.
–, 2012b. Pinter’s Anatomy page on ricci/forte home page. http://www.ricciforte.
com/en/pinters_anatomy.asp. Accessed 2 Apr 2012.
Ruffini, F., ed. 2010. Mash-up Theater – ricci/forte. Roma: Editoria e Spettacolo.
Sierz, A. 2001. In-Yer-Face-Theatre – British Drama Today. London: Faber.
Eve Marine Dauvergne
Chapter Four
An International Approach to A Slight Ache
Introduction
Being an English Language and Literature teacher in secondary schools in
Italy, I have had the chance to work in a European School in Varese (in the
Northern part of the country, close to the Swiss border). European schools have
a distinctive, modern approach to literature, and I had the chance to take the
students on a creative playwriting journey that started with the examination of A
Slight Ache by Harold Pinter.
The class was named S6L2 (English as a Second Language Advanced Learn-
ers). There were six students, five girls and a boy, all of them aged sixteen. They
all come from international and multicultural backgrounds: Giorgio, the only
boy, has an Italian father and a British mother; Alice is German, Liza is half
Dutch and half Italian, Sofia is Japanese and Swedish; Petra is Dutch, and Marica
is Italian and Czech.
I had asked the students to read the play before the start of the course, and
they came up with their own impressions of it. In their “regular” English litera-
ture course they had been studying Peter Shaffer’s Equus, so I guessed they could
handle Pinter quite well.
Before I started to ask more specific questions concerning the play itself, I
projected a page of A Slight Ache on the screen and asked the students to find a
line that – extracted from its immediate context – could be a key to the play itself.
I asked them to bear in mind that Edward was the character speaking and also
the alleged activity of the Matchseller. After a short while, they saw it: “I used to
play myself. Country house matches, mostly” (Pinter 1991, 178).
If you simply consider this sentence in its immediate context, you believe that
Edward is telling the old man, real or not, that he used to kick the ball in his youth.
But, if you hear these words from a different perspective, then we are no longer
talking about sports, but we can be dealing with the very meaning of the play. Let’s
start with the word “play”: you can play a game, but you can also act. And then
you have the expression “country house matches”. Taken separately, these words
seem perfectly transparent, but if you take into account the given context, things
start to appear under a different perspective. Edward and Flora live in a “country
house” and “matches” are what the Matchseller is supposed to sell.
68 Eve Marine Dauvergne
I told the students that, thanks to my interpretation of that line, Harold Pinter
had agreed to meet me back in 1993 when I was writing my M. A. thesis on his
screenplays. He told me that I had uncovered one of his little secrets and that he
was amazed it had not been spotted before. He told me that we shared a way of
seeing things and the fact that I had written to him about that line had been key
to his agreeing to meet me. I spent a wonderful afternoon in his company, and
he answered all my questions. When I read Pinter’s biography written by Michael
Billington, I was extremely surprised to find that Pinter remembered our en-
counter rather well and recalled “how a previous visitor mistook the tiny drinks-
stool he placed in front of her for a seat on which she precariously perched”
(Billington 1996, 1). That person was me. Students like these kinds of anecdotes,
and I told them how exactly the whole meeting had happened from my own
point of view.
After that digression, I asked them what they thought of the character of the
Matchseller and whether they had the impression that he was a real person or
not. The fact that A Slight Ache was originally a radio play seemed to change their
perspective, and they all agreed that the power of the play lies in the doubt in
which it leaves you. They told me that they did not think the play could work as
powerfully on stage as it does on the radio, and I made them listen to a radio re-
cording of the play in order to check if they maintained their strong opinion after
listening to the lines. They all said that this reinforced their opinion. The charac-
ter of the Matchseller should not be present on stage in a traditional sense. They
thought that a human-sized puppet should be used and that he should be covered
with pieces from a broken mirror and thus reflect Edward and Flora’s image and
different lighting according to the progression of the play. Bringing them back
to my original question, the Japanese student suggested that the Matchseller was
a spirit from the past, coming back to haunt Edward. She said that in the circle
of life we are always back where we started at some point and that we end up
replaced by someone else in the natural world. They all agreed that the power
of the auditory play was undeniably superior to its visual counterpart because
doubt pertaining to the Matchseller’s existence is the pivotal element of the play
itself. The Matchseller is therefore another Edward, a double created by Edward’s
mind who carries a tray of wet matches (“I used to play myself. Country house
matches, mostly.”).
We focused on the characters’ names, and the students pointed out that, while
Edward was a definitely well-established British name, all the other characters
appeared more ambiguous: Flora may be Fanny with her flaming red hair, and
the Matchseller is named Barnabas by Flora. Katherine Burkman (1971, 60)
pointed out the significance of these very names, saying that in the old style
An International Approach to A Slight Ache 69
calendar Saint Barnabas was the day of the summer solstice, “the longest day
of the year” (Pinter 1991, 154). My students were so absorbed in the research
over the deliberate choice of this name that not only did they come up with the
meaning of the word from the Greek as “son of consolation” or “son of encour-
agement” (as Katherine Burkman had already revealed), but they also went as
far as to bring up the extremely controversial Gospel of Barnabas, where Jesus
is described as a prophet and not as the son of God and where Jesus eventually
escapes crucifixion by being raised alive to heaven while Judas Iscariot, the trai-
tor, is crucified in Jesus’ place. This reversal of roles appealed to the students as
being in perfect tune with the play, and they insisted that Harold Pinter could not
have been unaware of this. One student stressed that Edward is an Old English
name meaning “protector of prosperity”, that Barnabas’ name was originally Jo-
seph and that the apostles gave him his new name. All of this was very interesting
indeed, but I suggested that we might be venturing a bit too far from what Pinter
originally intended. The female students insisted that Flora seemed a creation
of Edward’s mind. They stressed the heaviness of the seduction scene and said it
seemed directed by a male mind and totally unrealistic. The only male student
believed Flora to be a real character and saw the whole situation depicted in the
play as a general hallucination in which the couple creates the Matchseller ac-
cording to their fears and desires.
I asked the students to rename the play, and they came up with many inter-
esting possibilities, all taken from the text: 1) “My Husband would never have
guessed your name” (Pinter 1991, 176); “Till death us do part” (Pinter 1991, 177);
“Do as you would in your own house” (Pinter 1991, 178); “On my territory”;
“Usurper” or “Imposter”; “Down the path to the back gate” (Pinter 1991, 179);
“Me and my object” (Pinter 1991, 182) and, last but not least, someone suggested
that we should spend more time on the thrice mentioned “three masted schooner”
(Pinter 1991, 179, 180 and 183). Was there a hidden meaning in that?
They were asked to write their own ending for the play, to read these texts in
class and to vote for their favourite one in which Edward becomes a monk and
moves to the monastery nearby. Flora lives happily ever after with her Barnabas,
who is eventually transformed into a real baby.
They ended up in general agreement that no one compared to Harold Pinter
for he had done a much better job, and that A Slight Ache really was the best of
all possible titles.
My students arrived at the conclusion that what Pinter does with language is
quite simply explained but very difficult to reproduce: it is common knowledge
that every word has a certain number of meanings and functions. A sentence is
made of different words that, when combined, create different possible meanings
and functions through their association. We generally tend to underline the spe-
cific meaning and function of a word and sentence when we write. We generally
control it less when we are speaking. While everyone tends to emphasize the
exact meaning, we couldn’t help but notice that, often, in everyday conversation,
language is willingly or unwillingly misleading. Pinter is surely a great listener,
for he has been able to liberate words from their leash. To remain in Pinter’s own
world, a sentence can be compared to a room with an unspecified number of
doors. Every word is linked to the others with a feeble link of meaning or func-
tion. Pinter chooses one door, but he leaves all the other doors ajar (“I used to
play myself. Country house matches, mostly”.).
Conclusion
My students were fascinated by my encounter with Pinter. I will never forget
it myself. I was so scared when a certain door in Holland Park was opened by …
Pinter himself. The beginning was a bit unsettling, pretty much like a Pinter play.
But I made a fool of myself right from the start by sitting on the drinks stool,
and I felt much more relaxed after hearing Harold Pinter’s strong baritone laugh.
The time was now ripe to start the interview, while sipping a bottle of white
Chardonnay. Pinter sincerely and openly answered all my questions. It was a
once-in-a-lifetime experience I will never forget – as I haven’t forgotten our later
meetings in New York and London and three handwritten messages that are very
precious to me. After coming out of Pinter’s house on that May afternoon, I fully
understood the meaning of that famous Police song: Walking on the Moon. That
sensation I will never forget – that and Harold Pinter.
Interview with Harold Pinter (held in Harold Pinter’s house in

Holland Park, London, on 12 May 1993)
Do you ever read criticism, not just the reviews of the plays and the films,
but do you read books written on you or you just … don’t care what they say?
When we go downstairs I will show you a number of shelves, downstairs,
where the books are. I don’t read these books. I have them. I possess them. But
I don’t read them. Occasionally I dig into them. I open them at any page, you
know, and I have a look. But I never read through any of these books.
Do you play a decisive role in choosing the actors for the films? Do you ever
give an opinion on who you would like to interpret a specific role?
Oh yes, absolutely. It happens all the time. I have been very closely associated
with casting. For all the films. But sometimes things don’t go the way you expect
them to. For instance, I had an option on The Remains of the Day by Kazuo
Ishiguro and I had written a screenplay. It was going to be directed by Mike
Nichols, but in the end he couldn’t do it and James Ivory came into it with Ismail
Merchant. I was also the executive producer on that project. I had a certain,
official control on certain things. I’ve always had this control in a way, but it had
never been official, as it was this time. When Ivory and Merchant came into the
project, they took the whole thing over. I suddenly realized that they really were
going to work with Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. They didn’t actually tell me this but I
realized that was what was happening and we never discussed it. And I believe in
the film they have used … they still do one or two of my own scenes, but it’s not
my structure and it’s not my screenplay.
It seems to happen quite often in cinema.

Yes. It’s the first time it’s ever happened to me, so I’ve taken my name off the
whole thing, which is sad for me because I wrote … I was happy about what I did.
You had already finished the whole script?

Oh, yes, I wrote the whole screenplay. But they decided to do another screen-
play really so, that’s that. We’re very different writers. I respect and I like their
work – let me make that quite clear – but I think they’re much more literal than
I am. I think I tend towards something, another quality, which is not literal. I
wouldn’t know how to describe that quality.
It is important for me to know how you normally proceed when you choose
a novel and then write a screenplay. What do you focus your attention on?
I just … I look to the whole, overall structure of the thing. I think I look for the
structure first, the possible structure of the film and I see how it could be brought
to life. The Comfort of Strangers strikes me as something that I was very pleased
about. You know how it begins: “My father was a very big man …” And then it
comes again, it happens again when Robert meets Colin and Mary. It happens
three times. The repetition was linked to the idea that he is really crazy, that man.
I follow my nose a great deal in these things. I am just looking for something
(Mister Pinter stands up, goes to his desk and comes back with two pictures. On one
Pinter is sitting at a desk and on the other there is an open window through which
we see the sea and a boat.) This is just a bit of fun … That’s me writing Betrayal.
I always write on holiday. I like writing on holiday.
Is it Spain?
Corfù. That was my view while I was writing Betrayal. Through that
window. Someone took it. I don’t know. I just sit there and enjoy it. The great
thing about the whole activity is that I really enjoy it, adapting books for the
screen. I do know writers who say, “I decided I needed to have the house paint-
ed so I did a screenplay”. Not only have I never taken that view, but I wouldn’t
be able to do it if I just looked at it that way. I couldn’t write. I would be totally
paralysed, impotent, you know. To work first for money just wouldn’t work
because I need to really care about the book, the text itself, and to be excited.
And I really am. Let me tell you: I am excited by the idea of transposing a book
to the screen. A book that I respect and like. And secondly, I’m sure you’ll be
interested to hear that when I was a child, or a boy, the cinema was my life.
Not the theatre. I mean, I never knew anything about the theatre until I was
about seventeen. But films were in my life from the age of twelve-thirteen.
And I really went to see the silent Russian films: Eisenstein, Pudovkin and
Dovzhenko. And I saw all the French realist films, Bunuel and Cocteau. And
also the American black-and-white, the film noirs, the thrillers. That was my
real education.
Let me also tell you, about the films of the decade that you are analysing in
your thesis, I am particularly fond of Reunion and I think that it’s scandalous
how that film has been neglected. It wasn’t given any kind of real, proper dis-
tribution. On the other hand, what did you think of The Comfort of Strangers?
If I must be absolutely honest, I really like your screenplay, but somehow the
film does not seem to work … I did not find it as convincing as the novel or as
your screenplay for that matter.
I am glad to hear you say that because you’ve taken … I was very irritated
by Rupert Everett’s interpretation of Colin. I could hardly hear what he was
talking about actually. He was a great disappointment and I was really very
irritated.
Why wasn’t it Ian McEwan who wrote the screenplay for The Comfort of
Strangers? He is also a scriptwriter, isn’t he?
The thing about Ian McEwan, whom I know … He had done a screenplay a
year or so before. He couldn’t make it work. So I came into it and I was very in-
terested to do it. He was very pleased with my screenplay. I remember that when,
at the end of the film, Mary is questioned by an officer about the nature of her
relationship with Colin, she tells him that they were going to get married. That
was not in the book. I had this idea that in another state, marriage was a tangible
possibility. Now that Colin is dead, one side of her says: we were almost married.
It was possible. Just that now that he is dead, it is forever lost, that possibility.
You remember: “The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there”.
In The Comfort of Strangers, I was fascinated by Robert’s character, his being

bisexual, a lunatic, a psychopath, really.
Let me tell you something about The Handmaid’s Tale. I worked for a year
with Karel Reisz and then he couldn’t get the money that he needed. Finally
Volker Schlondorff came into it and by that time I was exhausted with it. I didn’t
know Volker Schlondorff very well but he came here. I remember him very well
sitting right where you are now and he said: “I’ll bring my new ideas”. I said: “I
can’t do anything more about it”. Volker Schlondorff said: “You won’t do any
more work?”. “No, I won’t do anything more”. I said: “Look, why don’t you just
go ahead and do it. If you want to do more work, why don’t you talk to the
author, the original, Margaret Atwood and see what she thinks?” And so he did.
Because I just couldn’t do any more. And he did talk to Margaret Atwood and
they did one or two things and the actors also did one or two things. And I kept
my name on that. But it isn’t all … I must make it absolutely clear: it is not all
mine. But a lot of it is and I felt sufficiently … you know. I think it’s a good film
and I like a lot of things about it very well, but I have a certain … I don’t like it
all, actually. But, apart from that and as I told you about The Remains of the Day,
I have had a rather unusual career as a screenwriter because I have a clause in
my contract which still exists, for thirty years, saying no one is to touch anything
without my permission, which means that the actors cannot make up dialogue.
And if they do, then I would have the ability, the right, to take my name off im-
mediately, which I have done with The Remains of the Day. Normally people just
do my lines … The funniest thing with my script was with Paul Schrader who
sat right there where you are. Again, I was working on The Comfort of Strangers
with John Schlesinger actually. But then he disappeared. The company really
wanted to make the film very much. So they said: “Paul Schrader is ready and
he is very, very enthusiastic”. So I said: “That’s fine”. So he came here and we had
a good talk and he said: “I’m ready to go ahead and do it”. You know, he is very
American, Paul Schrader. And he said: “I’ll go ahead and do it”. And he started.
He was ready to do it straight away “with your script and everything”. He said:
“I love it”. And then he said: “But there is only one thing I should tell you. I …
when I do my own movies”, he said, “I always encourage the actors to improvise”.
So I said: “Ah, ah”. So, he said: “What do you mean: ah, ah?”. So I said: “Ah, ah”.
So, he said: “Look, what would you say if I allowed the actors to improvise in The
Comfort of Strangers?”. I said: “Just go ahead, do what you like”. He said: “What
do you mean?”. I said: “Just do what you like”. He said: “Do what I like?”. And I
said: “Yes, you can do what you like, but if you improvise I will take my name off
the film”. So he said: “Okay, we won’t improvise”. And they didn’t.
When I read your screenplays, they are always pre-shooting scripts, but it is
amazing to notice how little is changed, even considering the final editing …
Yes. The structure changes a bit because it’s inevitable during the course of
editing, but not very much. Very little, in fact.
What was your impression of the film version of Turtle Diary?

Quite frankly, I don’t think Turtle Diary finally cuts the mustard, as they say.
It should have been better. I was disappointed in it finally myself. One of the rea-
sons incidentally was that they really ran out of money. You know the release of
the turtles … the turtles into the sea. That should have been real but it wasn’t. If
you look, when you see it again, you’ll see the waves, the sea isn’t really … They
didn’t have the money to wait for the tide. But it is interesting, quite funny and
I enjoyed it.
References
Billington, M. 1996. The Life and Work of Harold Pinter. London: Faber and
Faber.
Burkman, K.H. 1971. The Dramatic World of Harold Pinter: Its Basis in Ritual.
Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
Pinter, H. 1961. Plays One. London: Faber and Faber.
Pinter Further East
Tomaž Onič
Chapter Five
Early Productions of Pinter on the
Slovene Stage
This chapter focuses on the early productions of Pinter in Slovene theatres.

The term early productions in the title refers to those of Pinter’s plays that were
the first ones to be translated into Slovene and staged in Slovenia – which does
not necessarily mean that these were also the playwright’s earliest works for the
theatre.
The historical and cultural background that will be provided, as well as
relevant critical reviews and the response to them, helps to contextualize the
performances and the social and political situation in which they were produced.
Reviews of Slovene productions from newspapers and other local publications
are complemented with British ones, since parallel research into British and in-
ternational productions provides a more grounded insight into the choices and
decisions concerning Pinter’s entry onto Slovene stages. As Vasja Predan (1996)
reports in his overview of Slovene theatres, the beginnings of the Slovene theatre
tradition date back to the late 18th century, but their institutionalization process
starts about a century later. Shortly after WWI, three state theatres were in op-
eration: in Ljubljana, the Slovene capital with just over 50,000 inhabitants (today
approx. 275,000), in Maribor, today the second largest Slovene town, and in the
port town of Trieste, which at the time had more Slovene speakers than Ljubljana
but was annexed to Italy in 1920. Theatre activity declines in the interwar period
but starts to develop again after WWII. In 1952, seven more permanent profes-
sional theatres were founded: two in Ljubljana, one in Celje (located between
Maribor and Ljubljana), one in Kranj (Northwest of Ljubljana), two in the Slo-
vene Littoral region, and one in Ptuj. Even though several new experimental
theatres emerged in the 1960s, along with many private companies after the turn
of the 21st century, these ten Slovene institutions have ever since represented a
solid foundation for the development of the Slovene theatre.
Pinter’s plays entered the Slovene theatrical scene in the late 1960s. At the
time, Slovenia was one of the socialist republics of the Yugoslavian Federation
and as such under communist rule. Even though publishing houses and public
media were strictly censored, the cultural sphere was by no means disconnect-
ed from the new literary and theatrical streams in Western Europe. Intellectual
78 Tomaž Onič
exchange in these fields was possible through selected television programs, pro-
fessional press periodicals or even by travel abroad, since Yugoslavian borders to
the West were never impenetrably sealed. The population experienced one of the
softest forms of communism, since President Tito resisted Stalin’s extremist form
of leadership after World War II and refused to sign the Warsaw Pact. Instead,
Yugoslavia joined the Non-Aligned Movement and pursued a policy of neutrali-
ty during the Cold War. As a result, restrictions were milder than those exercised
in the countries of the Soviet Bloc. One of the privileges of Slovene residents –
including writers and theatre practitioners – was the possession of passports.
These were not issued automatically, and the refusal of a passport request could
have been an efficient way of preventing individuals from travelling abroad or
even a form of subtle punishment for “inappropriate behaviour”; however, for
politically unquestionable residents, a passport was not an impossibility. Thus,
fresh works by playwrights previously unseen in local theatres – like Pinter –
found their way onto Slovene as well as other Yugoslavian stages with relatively
little delay.
The first of Pinter’s plays to be produced in a Slovene theatre was The Home-
coming (Slov. Vrnitev, translated by Ciril Kosmač). The premiere was on the
smaller of the stages of the National Theatre in Ljubljana (Slov. Mala drama SNG
Ljubljana) in 1967, only three years after the play was written and in the same
year when it premiered in New York. For a theatrical space on the Eastern side
of the Iron Curtain, this can be considered relatively soon. On the other hand,
it is true that by the time the Ljubljana audience could see the play, Pinter had
already been writing for the theatre for a decade and was – with an opus of over
a dozen plays – already a salient figure on the contemporary English and inter-
national theatrical scene. In these early years, the international critical response
to Pinter’s plays (as well as the response of the public, which at least to a certain
extent followed the reviews) swung from initial appreciation of The Room in
1957 to extremely negative reviews of The Birthday Party and The Dumb Waiter
in the same year back to a warmer reception of the foreign and domestic repeti-
tions of the latter two and, finally, to the success of The Caretaker as premiered
in 1960 in London. Positive judgments of The Caretaker even began to come
from reviewers who had been initially less approving of Pinter. Daily Mail even
went so far as to judge The Caretaker to be “a play and a production which no
one who is concerned with the advance of the British drama can afford to miss”
(cf. Jongh 2004). Following this turning point in and significant cornerstone of
a promising playwriting career, the success of The Homecoming in 1965 (written
in 1964) came as no surprise. Directed by Peter Hall and starring Paul Rogers,
Ian Holm and Vivien Merchant, it was highly praised as “life changing” by John
Early Productions of Pinter on the Slovene Stage 79
Lahr (cf. 2007) and labelled “Pinter’s cleverest play” by Harold Hobson (cf. Esslin
1977, 28), the critic who was the only one to recognize Pinter’s talent after seeing
The Birthday Party a few years earlier.
The Homecoming in Ljubljana was directed by Žarko Petan (b. 1929), nowa-
days an established Slovene theatre, television and radio director and author of
literary works in various genres, particularly aphorisms. Since before WWII his
parents owned several houses and other real estate, he was judged to be a bour-
geois on the side of the capitalists and, therefore, an a priori enemy of the system.
It is not unlikely that this label had a considerable influence on his world view
as well as on his artistic career. He first graduated in economics in 1957 but
encountered several obstacles when seeking employment; he was offered a job
in an export company in the Slovene coastal town of Koper, but was – without
explanation – refused the necessary work permit by the Federal authorities. This
was needed because the area was officially still not incorporated into Yugosla-
vian, i.e. Slovene, territory (Zlobec 1997, 45). In the same year, Petan was the
main initiator of the foundation of an experimental theatre group Stage 57 (Slov.
Oder 57), which soon attracted many intellectuals, not only from the theatre
world but also philosophers and writers. In a constructed political trial in 1959 in
Belgrade (capital of Yugoslavia), Petan was brought before a military court and
condemned to 7 years in prison – but released a year and a half later for lack of
incriminating evidence (Enciklopedija Slovenije 1994, 319). He wanted to study
film in Italy but was refused the 4-year residence permit, neither could he go to
the film academy in Prague, since he was refused a passport. Finally, he enrolled
in the Academy for Film, Radio and Television in Ljubljana (graduated in 1977)
and pursued his career in arts (Ogrizek 2009). In one of his later interviews he
said he had realized that a career in arts was less attached to ideology and poli-
tics than a career in economics, even though the new career did not manage to
exempt him from being obstructed on numerous occasions (Zlobec 1997, 45).
Luckily, the Pinter project was not one of these.
Petan originally learnt about Pinter and The Homecoming from theatre jour-
nals. In an interview with Darja Hribar, he says he decided to stage Pinter, because
he found him intriguing (Hribar 1999, 234). Besides, this is not the only occasion
when he was the first to choose and stage a play by a modern playwright: he was
also the first to direct Ionesco in Slovenia. After learning about Pinter, he then
travelled to London for a study trip that was financially supported by the British
Council. Petan’s impressions from this experience were highly positive:
I did not speak to Pinter personally, but I was received by Peter Hall. Well, I said recep-
tion … this was, in fact, a very short meeting that took only about ten minutes. However,
80 Tomaž Onič
I did see Hall’s production. It was outstanding. Later a film with the same cast was based
on this production. I also went to see three commercial films based on Pinter’s screen-
plays. They were spy movies, but I immediately recognized the typical Pinter feature of
the undefined.1 (Hribar 1999, 234)
Petan reports that he later made another similar trip to Paris to see a French
production of Pinter (Hribar 1999, 234). The Slovene premiere of The Home-
coming was at the beginning of the season, on 27 October 1967. The director la-
belled the production a success (ibid., 235), a judgement which is also confirmed
by the number of performances: there were 37. To an international reader, this
number may seem low, but one must consider it in relation to the size of the Slo-
vene cultural space (the total population of Slovenia today is 2 million residents;
in 1967 it was 1.7 million). In fact, 37 shows is the second highest number of
reprises of any Pinter play on the Slovene stage (the highest was 43 performances
of The Birthday Party in 1979). The play was also invited to Budapest, where the
company performed on a large stage; the show was sold out and was highly suc-
cessful (ibid.).
Despite Petan’s previous incidents with the authorities, the production and
the play experienced no significant obstruction. As one of the non-political ob-
stacles, the director reports that before granting the rights of performance, Pinter
requested to see the Slovene translation. He returned it with corrections to and
lengthy commentaries on the text and on certain translation solutions/decisions.
The ensemble was led to believe that the translation had been analysed by some-
one deeply familiar with Slovene language and culture (Hribar 1999, 236). Gen-
erally, this practice of inspecting the translations of his plays was not uncommon
in the experience of other theatres staging Pinter’s plays.
Critical reviews of the performance were mixed, but most of them – and those
by most prominent literary critics – were in certain ways similar to the ones
Pinter’s earlier texts had received when they were first staged in the UK: many
claims and commentaries proved that there were vast areas of Pinter’s style not
yet fully understood – let alone accepted – by the theatre circles of the time.
The critics mostly praised the performance but openly questioned the quality
of the text. Novak (1967, 7) explicitly states that it was primarily the production
that drew spectators to the theatres. Vidmar (1967, 5) is even more severe: while
admitting that the text is cunningly and carefully constructed, he questions the
point of the play as a whole:
1 All translations from Slovene in this chapter are provided by T. Onič unless otherwise
specified.
In vain I have tried to realise what in this play could be of interest and what emotion
this text could possibly evoke in a spectator other than the repulsion and reluctance you
feel when listening to obscenities and primitive mischief-making. /…/ Also in vain have
I tried to figure out why and what for Pinter wrote this play. /…/ The excellent perfor-
mance, reliable directing and acting services of this young cast are the only excuses for
putting this comedy on stage, without which the repertory of our institution would feel
no loss in its artistic aspect. /…/ (ibid.)
A deeper understanding of Pinter and an appreciation of his style is shown

in a review by Vasja Predan. He had been a dramaturg at the national television
station for a while, and since 1962 the editor of a two-weekly periodical Naši raz-
gledi, a hybrid publication between a journal and a newspaper, one of the main
publications that set the foundations of Slovene literary and theatrical criticism.
He also accompanied Petan on his trip to Paris (Hribar 1999, 234). He wrote that
it would have been unrealistic to expect that Pinter and his The Homecoming be
easy to explain: “on the contrary, I believe this is quite impossible, particularly in
a condensed way” (Predan 1967, 7).
The next play by Pinter that came to Slovene stages was The Caretaker (Slov.
Hišnik, translated by Janko Moder). This was in 1970, which is ten years after its
world premiere in London. Despite that and the fact that the Slovene audience
had seen The Homecoming three years earlier, Pinter was still not well known.
Being aware of this, the editor of the theatre program prepared for the Celje
production (Ž/mavc/ 1970, n. pag.) included in the booklet a complete transla-
tion of Schechner’s essay, published in 1966, which gives an extensive analysis of
this particular play as well as of Pinter’s style in general; moreover, it provided
numerous excerpts from his plays illustrating the points Schechner makes.
Both major Slovene newspapers, Delo and Večer, reviewed the Celje produc-
tion of The Caretaker. Each review occupied a considerable amount of news-
paper space, and their authors were thorough in approaching the theatre event
from various angles. These reviews give credit to the director, the actors and the
performance in general. Moreover, they both provide considerable information
about the author, his style, his preferred themes, and – of course – about The
Caretaker. In Večer, Smasek (1970) provides an extended, mostly appreciative
review of the Celje production of The Caretaker, lingering on each individual
actor, the director, scenery and costumes. In addition, he develops a personal
interpretation of the play, in which he raises a question that he sees as central to
the play: “Why do these people [the characters of the play, T. O.] so mercilessly
lacerate each other, why do they persist in this state, why do they not destroy, or
demolish, or remove it?” (ibid., 10-11). After developing the argument, he moves
towards formulating an answer. He starts by saying that, if someone “endures an
82 Tomaž Onič
unbearable situation for such a long time, this situation cannot be so unbearable
after all /…/ it is only so on the surface, but the essence is elsewhere” (ibid.). He
finally arrives at the answer that a human being cannot live alone but longs for a
relationship of some kind (ibid.). This is probably the reason for the title of the
review, which is “Fight against Loneliness” (Slov. Boj proti osamljensti).
Javornik (1970) in Delo focuses more on the guest performance in Ljubljana
Town Theatre (Slov. Mestno gledališče ljubljansko), since this is the one he saw.
He expresses no doubt about Pinter’s mastery of dialogue and dramatic tension;
however, the following quotation proves that he has not fully accepted all the
dimensions of Pinter’s style:
Šedlbauer [director of the production, T.O.] could, without causing any harm, have
shortened that typical but tiring repetition of certain phrases; on the other hand, he has
created a very lively and dynamic mise-en-scène production. (Javornik 1970, 10)
This statement could be an indicator that despite the progress orientation of

our theatre critics and theatre companies at the time and their attempts to follow
the latest theatre trends and movements, modern theatre probably still had its
dark areas. This situation could partly even reflect the one in the UK a decade
earlier: despite the fact that Beckett’s Waiting for Godot was staged in London in
1955 (the Paris premiere was in 1953), and that Osborne’s Look Back in Anger
started the ‘angry young man’ movement in 1957, the theatre space was still to a
certain extent sceptical of the new trends. Pinter himself commented that nega-
tive reviews of his early plays might have been, at least partly, the result of theat-
rical policies. On the other hand, he admits that a few years before the premiere
of The Caretaker, the theatre situation began to change. According to a conver-
sation with Richard Findlater, published in The Twentieth Century in February
1961, this change had a positive impact on the promotion and success of the play:
As far as the state of the theatre is concerned, /…/ I think things will go on more or less
as they are for some considerable time. But it seems to me that there has been a certain
development in one channel or another in the past three years. The Caretaker wouldn’t
have been put on, and certainly wouldn’t have run, before 1957. The old categories of
comedy and tragedy and farce are irrelevant, and the fact that managers seem to have
realized that is one favourable change. (Pinter 1961, xi)
After the 1970 production of The Caretaker in Celje, there was only one
more in Slovenia – more than 20 years after the first. The translator was the
same, and the translation almost so. The premiere was at the beginning of the
1990/91 theatre season in the Kranj Theatre. Although the theatre program (cf.
Bremec 1990) was thinner than the Celje one, it still contained sufficient infor-
mation about the play and the playwright. Franc Vurnik, who wrote the review of
the production, was quite severe towards the play in most respects; however, in-
terestingly enough, he found disturbing the very same elements as Javornik had
twenty years previously. It cannot go unnoticed that at the time this review was
written, Pinter’s plays had been present on the world scene for over three decades
and for over two on Slovene stages. Yet – paradoxically – the elements criticised
are those that Pinter’s admirers and scholars of his opus most appreciate:
Possibly, some improvement could apply only to the rhythm of the performance. The
dim introduction could be dropped, as well as the delays, because both imply some kind
of mystery that doesn’t exist at all. (Vurnik 1990, 7)
Since sources on Pinter were abundant by the late eighties, it is surprising

that Vurnik hazarded such a groundless, even mistaken opinion. He overlooked
many important qualities of this particular text as well as Pinter’s style in general
that were prominent in the performances (cf. a working video recording of one
of these performances, Pinter 1990). The 1990 production of The Caretaker was
the last play by Pinter to be produced in Slovenia before its independence from
Yugoslavia.
Between these two productions of The Caretaker (1970 and 1990), the Slovene
audience was able to see three productions of Old Times (1974, 1982 and 1987),
The Birthday Party (1979) and Betrayal (1979) (cf. Hribar 1999, 231-3). In Slove-
nia, Old Times was first produced in 1974 – three years after its first publication
and the UK premiere – on the stage of the Slovene National Theatre in Ljubljana.
The original text was translated in 1972 by Maila Golob as Njega dni, and it still
exists in several Slovene libraries as an unpublished typescript. It was later pub-
lished in a cyclostyled book form by the Association of Cultural Organizations of
Slovenia (Slov. Zveza kulturnih organizacij Slovenije) (1979) and is also available
in libraries. With regards to the 1974 Ljubljana production, the newspaper Delo
notices that this play takes “a new direction in modern drama” as well as “a new
direction in the playwright’s opus” (Šuklje 1974, 8), while the review in Dnevnik,
another daily newspaper, lists a long line of questions regarding the plot, with
which the reviewer tries to make a point about the openness of the storyline and
the undefined plot (Gabrijelčič 1974, 12). A few days later, Delo also published
a review by an established Croatian reviewer Joso Puljizević (1974, 2), whose
review analyses the play and its author rather than the theatre production.
The second and third productions of Old Times bore the Slovene title Stari časi
and used the same translation by Maila Golob. The one in 1982 was produced at
the Academy for Film, Radio and Television in Ljubljana (Slov. abbrev. AGRFT)
as a study production. It was also included in the accompanying programme
of the Borštnik Festival, the biggest theatre festival in Slovenia, a yearly event.
84 Tomaž Onič
The 1987 production was staged by the People’s Theatre in Celje (Slov. Slovensko
ljudsko gledališče v Celju). The reviews of both show more understanding of
Pinter and do not engage in extreme judgements. Most of them mention the
now famous theme, which Pinter himself uses as a cue in his Nobel Lecture
(Pinter 2005), that something is not necessarily true or false but can be both.
The fourth Slovene premiere of Pinter was The Birthday Party (Slov. Zabava
za rojstni dan, translated by Janez Žmavc) in 1979. It was produced on the stage
of the Ljubljana Town Theatre (Slov. Mestno gledališče ljubljansko) directed by
Zvone Šedlbauer, the same director who nine years previously had staged The
Caretaker in Celje. Considering that this is today one of Pinter’s most frequently
staged pieces and that some critics even regard it one of the best achievements
of contemporary British theatre, it is surprising that it came to the Slovene stage
only two decades after its UK premiere. Another reason for surprise over this
incredibly long delay is the restless history of its original London production and
the accompanying critical reviews, which could or, rather, should have brought
The Birthday Party to the attention of modern Slovene theatre practitioners. Its
first London production ran for only a week, and it took most of the critics some
time to realise that there was more to it than mere “verbal anarchy”, as Milton
Shulman (1958, 6) labelled what later became known as typical Pinteresque
dialogue. He also reproached this style as lacking in humour, as can be seen
from the title of his review in the Evening Standard: “Sorry Mr Pinter, you’re just
not funny enough” (ibid.). The Cambridge Review was satisfied with the qual-
ity of the production but critical of the text: “Despite the excitement the play
generates in performance, the quality of The Birthday Party seems debatable”
(Pinter 2004). The Manchester Guardian’s critic ceased trying to disambiguate
the plot: “What all this means, only Mr Pinter knows, for as his characters speak
in non-sequiturs, half-gibberish, and lunatic ravings, they are unable to explain”
(cf. Ellis 2003). Walter Kerr, a respected and influential reviewer in The New York
Times, denoted The Birthday Party as “by and large a bore” (cf. Merritt 1990, 231)
and expressed doubts that the audience would be “turned on” (ibid.) by this play.
The only supportive review came from The Sunday Times critic, Harold Hobson.
Hobson missed the opening night and went to the following day’s matinee; how-
ever, by the time his review was published, the Lyric Theatre had already closed
the play down. However, in about two years, after the success of The Caretaker,
the odds again turned in favour of Pinter. Among other critics, Alan Pryce-
Jones (1960, 21) published an encouraging review in The Observer and spoke in
Pinter’s defence regarding earlier, less favourable reviews of other plays. Kenneth
Tynan, was also quite self-critical, confessing that “[w]ith The Caretaker which
was moved from the Arts Theatre to the Duchess Theatre, Harold Pinter has
begun to fulfill the promise that I signally failed to see in The Birthday Party”
(Tynan 1960, 12).
Contrary to this severe criticism, the reviewers’ reactions to the Slovene produc-
tion as well as to the text of The Birthday Party are positive. Most of them share a
common observation that the play is still current twenty years later and find that the
text has not aged, while Berger (1979, 202) is critical on this point. Searching argu-
ments for its staying power, he draws parallels to Ionesco and Beckett, continues
by posing several rhetorical questions as to on what level of the play the elements
of staying power might be found, but eventually fails to identify them: “The Birth-
day Party strongly attracts with its technical perfection and equalization as well as
with the perfect acting of the six characters; however, it lacks the striking force with
which it would persuade us of today’s power and relevance of Pinter’s text” (ibid.,
transl. T.O.). Javoršek in Delo is very pleased with the production, but generalizes his
enthusiasm to all English plays as opposed to those by playwrights of other nations:
We know how to play the English [playwrights, T.O.]: great Pinter in the Town Theatre
/…/ when ruminating why this play was so successful, one can only conclude that we
are closer to the English drama than to any other. We do not know how to play Ionesco.
Beckett so-so. Adamov not at all. (Javoršek 1979, 8)
Pinter’s fifth play to arrive on the Slovene stage was Betrayal (Slov. Prevara,
translated by Dušan Tomše). It was produced at the National Theatre in Lju-
bljana in November 1979, the same calendar year as The Birthday Party, but the
following theatrical season. The world premiere of Betrayal was in 1978, so the
Slovene production followed it with a delay of only one year. This means that the
Ljubljana theatre included Pinter’s new text in the first possible season, which
indicates a fair amount of trust in the author, since the text could not have been
“tested” broadly by many theatre companies, particularly not the non-UK ones
that would require translations.
Since Slovenia’s independence (June 1991), Pinter has remained current in
Slovene theatres. Since the 1990 staging of The Caretaker, we have seen about a
dozen and a half new productions of his plays; among these were three versions
of The Birthday Party, five Dumb Waiters, two Betrayals, another Homecoming,
and several new productions, like Ashes to Ashes, The Lover and Celebration.
Apart from the plays that were staged, several others have been translated but
never staged. Among these we could mention Janko Moder’s translation of Trou-
ble in the Works (Obratne težave), The Black and White (Belo in črno), Request
Stop (Pomožno postajališče), Last to Go (Zadnji) and Applicant (Prosilec); Dušan
Tomše provided the translation of The Hothouse (Topla greda), and Alja Predan
of A Kind of Alaska (Neke vrste Aljaska) (cf. Hribar 1999).
86 Tomaž Onič
According to Hribar (1999, 195-8), Pinter’s plays are popular with theatre
professionals, particularly directors and actors, but less so with the audience.
For the actor Polde Bibič, for example, who played Davies in the 1990 produc-
tion of The Caretaker in Kranj, “Pinter is, by all means, an author in whom one
takes pleasure” (Mencinger 1990, 17; transl. T.O.). Petan, the director of the first
Pinter in Slovenia, says that “the way Pinter writes his stories is exceptional; the
actors like to play him. He knows how to write for them” (Hribar 1999, 234;
transl. T.O.). Hribar continues that the main reason for such popularity is the
fact that his texts allow scope for great creativity. On the other hand, she con-
cludes, the same texts are considerably less popular with the general public. Her
assumption is that they require a certain degree of active mental participation on
the part of the spectators, who are, unfortunately, not always willing to contrib-
ute that, since they may have come to the theatre merely to relax and enjoy an
easy show (Hribar 1999, 196). Statistical data to support the statement about the
lower popularity of Pinter is the number of repeat performances per production;
this seldom exceeds 30, while the threshold of popularity is usually perceived as
100 performances.
References
Berger, A. 1979. Mestno gledališče ljubljansko: Harold Pinter: Zabava za rojstni
dan. Naši razgledi, 6 Apr: 202.
Bremec, M., ed. 1990. Hišnik. Gledališki list. Kranj: PG Kranj.
Ellis, S. 2003. Birthday Party, London 1958. The Guardian, 2 Apr: 4.
Enciklopedija Slovenije. 1994. (eds. M. Javornik, D. Voglar et. al.). Ljubljana: Mla-
dinska knjiga.
Esslin, M. 1977. Pinter: A Study Of His Plays. London: Eyre Methuen.
Gabrijelčič, S. 1974. Njega dni. Dnevnik. 21 Oct: 12.
Hribar, D. 1999. Sestavine sloga Harolda Pinterja v slovenskih prevodih. Doctoral
dissertation (unpublished). Ljubljana.
Javornik, M. 1970. Pinterjeva inačica. Delo, 16 Jun: 5.
Javoršek, J. 1979. Angleže znamo igrati: izvrsten Pinter v MGL. Delo, 16 Mar: 8.
Jongh, N. de. 2004. The Tramp in the Pleasure Dome. Accessible at: http://www.
alanbates.com/abarchive/stage/Caretaker/carelondon.html, 3 Sept.
Lahr, J. 2007. Demolition Man: Harold Pinter and ’The Homecoming. The
New Yorker, 24 Dec.
Mencinger, L. 1990. Na odru je doma resnica. Gorenjski glas, 19 Oct: 17.

Merritt, S. H. 1990. Pinter in Play. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Novak, J. 1967. Harold Pinter: Vrnitev. Mladina, 13 Nov: 7.
Ogrizek, M. 2009. Resnica o »resnici«: Intervju z Žarkom Petanom. Bukla vol.
41, Iss. May.
Pinter. H. 1961. Writing for Myself. In Plays 2, H. Pinter, London and Boston:
Faber & Faber, 1996: xi.
–, 1990. Hišnik. Video recording of the performance (unpublished). PG Kranj.
–, 2004. From the Cambridge Review. Html text. Accessible at: http://www.
haroldpinter.org/plays/plays_bdayparty.shtml, 3 Sep.
–, 2005. Art, Truth and Politics: The Nobel Lecture.
Predan, V. 1967. Harold Pinter: Vrnitev. Ljubljanski dnevnik, 25 Oct: 7.
–, 1996. Slovenska dramska gledališča: kratek oris. Ljubljana: Mestno gledališče
ljubljansko.
Pryce-Jones, A. 1960. Through the looking-glass. The Observer, 29 Apr: 21.
Puljizević, J. 1974. Smisel odrskega rebusa. Delo, 21 Oct: 2.
Shulman, M. 1958. Sorry Mr Pinter, you’re just not funny enough. Evening
Standard, 20 May: 6.
Smasek, L. 1970. Boj proti osamljenosti. Večer, 19 Jun: 10.
Šuklje, R. 1974. Pinterjeva “nova dramatika”. Delo, 18 Oct: 8.
Tynan, K. 1960. A Verbal Wizard in the Suburbs. Observer, 5 Jun: 12.
Vidmar, J. 1967. Harold Pinter: Vrnitev. Delo, 27 Oct: 5.
Vurnik, F. 1990. Malo oddaljena prispodoba. Gorenjski glas, 2 Oct: 7.
Zlobec, C. 1997. Intervju: Žarko Petan. Sodobnost (1963-), vol. 45, no. 1-2.
Ž/mavc/, J., ed. 1970. Hišnik. Gledališki list. Celje: SLG. n. pag.
Acija Alfirević
Chapter Six
Harold Pinter’s Reception in Croatia
My first encounter with Pinter dates back to May 1973 when I went to see
a performance of Old Times at the Theatre Etc (Teatar Itd) in Zagreb. After a
long wait in the foyer, prior to entering the auditorium, a voice from the loud-
speakers informed the audience that since the author, Harold Pinter, had not yet
given his permission for the performance, the play was going to be presented
as “the third public dress rehearsal”. Three years later, after graduating in Phi-
losophy and Yugoslavian Languages and Literatures, on 10th October 1976 [i.e.
Pinter’s birthday], I arrived in London to study English. My plan was to stay for
six months; however, it turned out to be six years. A year after my arrival, on 5th
November 1977, I met Harold Pinter in the Museum Tavern in Bloomsbury. He
gave a reading of W. S. Graham’s poetry in the upper room of the pub. During my
stay in London, I attended many of his readings, talks and theatre and film pro-
ductions, in many of which he also acted. Later I lived and lectured in New York,
Melbourne and Budapest, and from 1997 until 2001 again in London, then in
Berlin and Cracow. Everywhere I followed Pinter’s work and attended produc-
tions of his plays. Interestingly, apart from Old Times, I have seen none of his
works produced in either Croatia or former Yugoslavia. Therefore, I enjoyed my
research leading to the contribution to this monograph last summer in Croatia.
In it I depict the reviews of Harold Pinter’s very first productions in Croatia until
the latest ones and I have subdivided this chapter according to those periods.
1964-1965
Croatian theatre goers first became acquainted with Harold Pinter on 5th No-
vember 1964 when his one-act plays The Collection and The Lover were pre-
miered as a double bill at the Zagreb Drama Theatre (renamed Gavella Theatre
in 1970). Two days prior to the opening, the main daily newspaper Večernji list
(Evening Paper) announced the performance on its cultural page in an article
entitled “A Poet of Silence”. A journalist with the initials A. M. introduced Pinter
as “the most interesting representative of contemporary European dramaturgy”1
1 All translations from Croatian in this chapter are provided by A. Alfirević unless
otherwise specified.
90 Acija Alfirević
(M. 1964). Further in the text the journalist gave Pinter’s bio-bibliographical data
and referred to him as a poet of silence, because “he considers that a human be-
ing is the most sincere in silence – then he/she has no opportunity to lie. Words
are – according to Pinter – the means of our defence against loneliness, therefore
they are never true” (M. 1964).
The following day, 4th November 1964, another main daily newspaper,
Vjesnik (Gazette), published on its cultural page “The Ambiguity of Speech”,
an article signed with the initials D. F. This journalist stressed that “[t]he name
Harold Pinter is still unknown to our larger theatre audience. This is not surpris-
ing since until now at home [i.e., Yugoslavia at that time] only one of his plays
has been performed: last year Belgrade’s Atelje 212 (Atelier 212) put on Pinter’s
The Caretaker and brought it to Zagreb. In the West, Pinter is very well known
and his name ranks among the greatest contemporary playwrights” (F. 1964).
This journalist then described Pinter’s poetics, stressing the meaning of silence
and speech and quoting from Pinter’s text “Writing for the Theatre” delivered by
Pinter at the National Student Drama Festival in Bristol in 1962.
On 5th November 1964, the Croatian edition of the Yugoslav daily newspaper
Borba (Fight), announced the play in a manner similar to the earlier ones and
wrote about Pinter, his bio-bibliographical data and poetics. The article “The
Collection and Lover by Harold Pinter – the first premiere of the Zagreb Drama
Theatre” was signed with the initials Z. Z. (1964).
The first review appeared in Večernji list on 7th November 1964 with the
headline “In A Closed Circle” and subtitled “Interesting production, but for a
smaller stage”. The author, the distinguished critic Marija Grgičević, wrote that
an exclusive experiment such as the newest premiere at the Zagreb Drama Theatre could
be interesting and useful without a doubt, but only for a theatre which performs it dur-
ing its more full season, and if so – on a smaller stage. Thus, when as the first premiere
of the season – for which we had to wait until the beginning of November, we get a
performance toward which – because of its bizarre quality – even the premiere audience
expresses disapproval, we have to ask ourselves what kind of game the Zagreb Drama
Theatre is playing with its audience. First, the theatre invites the audience through the
Friendship Clubs (an approach worthy of praise per se), and then puts the audience off
with such a poorly timed insertion into the repertoire. (Grgičević 1964)
The author further describes Harold Pinter’s dramaturgy stressing that his work
arose from the opposite poles of ‘angry’ and socially engaged, and negates at the same
time social engagement as well as realistic conformism. Although close to Beckett and
Ionesco, Pinter does not create ‘anti-theatre’ but in his work dominates dynamic of play
through entirely concrete life situations. His characters are neither realistic nor meta-
phors from the theatre of the absurd, and when they talk banalities, they do not do so
Harold Pinter’s Reception in Croatia 91
in order to express a certain existential meaning as in Beckett, nor is their speech per
se the dominant element of the play, as it is in Ionesco. Captured in very realistic situa-
tions, they speak not to reveal themselves or to approach one another, but to camouflage
themselves with their speech and defend themselves against the ‘horror of communica-
tion’ which appears only in the moments of silence. (Grgičević 1964)
Grgičević then analyzes the plays, concluding that in their motifs the plays are
quite akin to each other: “Expressively cold-mannered acting, acrid humour and
the refined disinterest of the characters in this performance, which flows as in a
circle without rise leaves a rather cold impression” (1964). She, however, praises
the director Georgij Paro, who “precisely worked out every detail of his produc-
tion trying to emphasize the meaning which exists behind the text itself – although
only in the second part, in The Lover, did he succeed more clearly in expressing
and hinting at the dimensions of what Pinter leaves unspoken” (1964). Grgičević
also offered high praise for the actors, especially for Neva Rošić, who played Sarah.
Another distinguished critic, Jozo Puljizević, penned a review “The Collec-
tion of Lovers”, which was published in Vjesnik on 7th November 1964. Puljizević
wrote the following:
Harold Pinter did not receive boisterous applause on our stage. Glory will nevertheless
devolve upon him since he will succeed in confusing snobs who will admire him, but
who will not understand him. The snobs will, however, be satisfied, even too much to kill
their time until the next premiere: the theatre will not lose its reputation if performing
Pinter – who used a banal plot for his inspiration – shows a world in which communica-
tive shorthand abbreviations are not properly understood by either of its protagonists.
In Pinter everything is possible; therefore, nothing ought to be taken seriously. His peo-
ple are personalities without a goal; they have at their disposal certain means, first and
foremost speech, in the validity of which they deeply doubt, so they speak at the wrong
places, they are silent just when they ought to utter a human word about themselves,
and they constantly provoke each other with cleverly directed misunderstandings. From
the beginning, they play the wrong, false notes on the keyboard of elementary human
emotions. They boast that everything is relative. Pinter’s people are indeed personalities
who, on the stage, cannot offer believable arguments or information about their past
lives, about their present occupation or about their aspirations. His people are grotesque
caricatures of contemporary human beings who live in a civilization they don’t under-
stand, since they don’t understand how they belong to that civilization and what role
they play in that civilization. Perhaps the sentences of his characters capture something
of the authentic voices heard on tapes which recorded in discouinity the speech of dif-
ferent people in different situations, while the personalities on the stage are only means
of montage for those replicas. (Puljizević 1964)
This passage shows how close Puljizević came to Pinter’s poetics, although his
statements also reveal the approach of a member of the Communist Party, which
92 Acija Alfirević
he was. In his distinctive style, Puljizević continues describing the plot and con-
cludes that “[p]laying so uncontrollably with a huge mass of misunderstanding,
Pinter has also ended up on the Zagreb stage as a misunderstanding” (1964).
Puljizević then stresses that the applause at the end of the plays was reserved for
the actors, and he praises their achievement as well as that of the director: “All of
the actors deserved applause from the audience, because on the strength of their
unquestionable conviction they prevent Pinter from leaving the audience in a di-
lemma, the likes of which has not been seen for a long time on our stages” (1964).
On 11th November 1964, a young intellectual, Srećko Lipovčan, published
a review “Misunderstandings in Understanding” in the Stage Light column of
the Studentski list (Student paper). The review was puzzling and rather negative.
Lipovčan had several concerns:
What’s with Pinter? And why Pinter, and if Pinter, then why this particular one? His
Zagreb debut using these texts did not prove there was a need to stage them, unless the
intent was to introduce the curiosities of modern trends in European theatre. In any
case, it all came down to provoking the audience who, as a matter of fact, was – and
rightfully so – more than pleased with the actor’s creation, but this is an entirely insuffi-
cient argument. We know very well the whole ‘Pinter’ cast of the Zagreb Drama Theatre
and we have no need to assure ourselves as to their potential and qualifications. Once
again: Why this Pinter in Zagreb? (Lipovčan 1964)
Despite such relatively unfavourable reviews, Pinter’s The Collection and The
Lover remained in the theatre’s repertoire until 24th October 1965 when the
show closed after 30 performances.
1967
Two years later, on 18th February, Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming was per-
formed on the Mala scena (Small Stage) of the Croatian National Theatre in
Zagreb. It was directed by Georgij Paro, the same director who directed the pre-
vious two one-act plays. In Večernji list of 21st February 1967 under the title
“Psychology of the Herd”, Marija Grgičević wrote the following:
More ambitious, more passionate, and in every respect stronger than the previously seen
one-act plays [i.e. The Collection and The Lover], Pinter’s new play The Homecoming
will – without doubt – attract an audience. It is currently being performed at the Small
Stage of the Croatian National Theatre, under the direction of Georgij Paro. The Home-
coming is a play of powerful conflicts, of hate and struggles for power within a family. A
circle, which with its elemental brutality reminds us of relations in an animal herd. The
characters are amoral people, raised outside the law, insensible to civil norms… Nothing
is explained by the end, as in life. /…/ Human relations are tangled up in an insoluble
knot, individuals act against others, they find and attack others’ vulnerable spots, but
they never explain themselves. One cannot talk about their motives because they are
concealed behind a veil of secrecy. Because the characters do not know themselves, they
cannot reveal themselves fully. However, it is precisely in the unspoken that this dif-
ficulty retains its suggestive power. (Grgičević 1967)
Grgičević then praised the director Georgij Paro as well as the actors, espe-
cially Alexandra-Saša Violić in the part of Ruth: “There is no doubt the role of
Ruth is the greatest acting achievement of Saša Violić” (1967).
Under the title “Tragic Humour”, Jozo Puljizević wrote in Vjesnik of 21st Feb-
ruary 1967 the following commentary:
And while Pinter’s The Lover was all understatements which called forth certain asso-
ciations (and under Paro’s first direction even a certain symbolism), this drama is more
complete and ‘still’, subordinated to the guiding idea, not to the arabesque of a sentence.
Despite this more solid dramatic material, Pinter’s The Homecoming will entertain you
as well with cleverly composed, original anecdotes taken from the store of a good surre-
alistic repertoire. These anecdotes are included not only for their own sake, but to deftly
add to the picture of a realistic, but irresistibly bizarre atmosphere. (Puljizević 1967)
When discussing the atmosphere, Puljizević praised the director, actors, and
all involved – such as the scenographer, costume designer and the translator –
Ivo Juriša, who had also translated The Collection and The Lover. Another young
critic, Mani Gotovac, published a review “Between Silence and Speech, between
Play and Reality” in the weekly cultural journal Telegram (Telegraph) on 24th
February 1967. Gotovac questioned
[w]hat is The Homecoming, really? Is it a paradigm of modern eroticism, or perhaps a
naturalistic drama about the animal in the closed circle of a family or a metaphor of
the contemporary world in which people are objects without thought or action? Is it a
burlesque which has its origin in the absurd, or an ironic play made from today’s liter-
ary motifs? How much of an artist’s bluff is contained here, and how much is the real
dramatics of this time? And why, in the final analysis, do we see that strict separation in
standpoint pro/for and contra/against Pinter, that dichotomy between those who com-
pare him to Beckett and those who see in his dramaturgy only fashionable material for
snobs or the attraction of forbidden fruit for the English Puritan? (Gotovac 1967)
In her analysis, Gotovac then noted that the dilemmas are understandable, since
Pinter’s dramaturgy is unusual and it’s difficult to make it fit any model; his multi-
layered play at moments appears inaccessible, at moments non-existent, and it’s difficult
to uncover, open and define that undefined, divined, unsaid world of Pinter at all. He is
only consistent in his permanent evasion and flight, offering the possibility of interpret-
ing everything in many ways, and just at the moment when it seems that an enigma is
solved, exposed, everything turns to different, new ways, escapes – and we’re tricked
again. (Gotovac 1967)
94 Acija Alfirević
Gotovac, however, emphasized certain contents in Pinter’s world and his

dramatic solutions. First, she discovered the feeling of anxiety, discomfort,
and uneasiness: “Everything that should look like life gets the shapes of para-
noid nightmare. /…/ It’s impossible to find out the truth of Pinter’s characters”
(Gotovac 1967). Secondly, Gotovac thought that in his dramatic process Pinter
was also constant, although not original, since this kind of process was already
familiar not only from drama but also from prose, especially from Kafka’s works:
From the time of Kafka, incredible and abnormal events have been shown as credible
and normal. And they are considered such by the characters who participate in them.
All of this causes an atmosphere of expectation and unrest, due to some danger, and
uncertainty. In Pinter, all of this is expressed by pauses and silence – more by a move
than speech itself. (Gotovac 1967)
Gotovac also praised the director Georgij Paro, finding that his interpretation
showed his affinity with Pinter’s feelings and view of the world. The Homecoming
was performed 29 times before it closed on 17th December 1967.
1969-1970
On 12th April, Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter was staged as a double bill with
Peter Shaffer’s The Public Eye by the Zagreb Drama Theatre. The director Vanča
Kljaković decided to use the translation by Nada Šoljan. In “Applause to Vidović”
in Večernji list, Marija Grgičević wrote the following review:
Although without any special revelations, and even somehow stretched, under certain
conditions this premiere can be watched with pleasure. After Pinter’s incompatible The
Homecoming on our post-Beckett stage, The Dumb Waiter, directed adequately, but not
sufficiently dynamically by Kljaković, remains without stronger tension in its transition
from the comic to cruelty. (Grgičević 1969)
According to Grgičević, Shaffer’s play was the more successful one at this
opening night, particularly owing to the interpretation of the actor Ivica Vidović.
However, Nasko Frndić in Borba of 17th April 1969 in his review “Excellent
Dulčić and Vidović” was more impressed with Pinter:
The Renowned English dramatist Harold Pinter is an established scenic experimenter
who looks for new, modern, fresh relations in the medium of theatre art. At first glance,
his one-act play The Dumb Waiter is an empty text, but from scene to scene in front of
us the subtext of human drama veiled in farce takes place, and at the end grows into
tragedy. (Frndić 1969)
Frndić praised Kljaković’s direction, as well as the actor Ante Dulčić who played
Ben. The Dumb Waiter was shown 29 times and closed on 16th December 1970.
From 1971 to 1981

Zagreb avantgarde Teatar Itd (Theatre Etc) staged Pinter’s Landscape on 17th
February 1971; the play was directed by young Miro Marotti. Marija Grgičević’s
review “Slipping Dialogues” came out in Večernji list on 19th February 1971.
She found that the performance was essentially artificial. At the end of her brief
review, Grgičević gave a piece of advice: “Certain radio-plays, it seems, should
be left in the domain of the medium for which they were written, especially if a
theatrical justification and form for their visualisation has not been discovered”
(Grgičević 1971). Journalist Dražen Vukov Colić in his review “The Blind Gut of
Avantgarde” was more eloquent, though not more impressed:
Harold Pinter’s Landscape remains only a helpless skeleton left from the whole theatre of
the absurd: there the gnawed bones of well known thesis ting a kind of strange requiem
all the time just to that point of view on the world which a few decades ago revived Euro-
pean theatre. At the premiere of Landscape, even those who still mercilessly believe that
listening the absurdity of living is the only honest approach to the contemporary human
condition, had to admit that the epigones are helpless even when the essential thesis
of their models bring to the crystal clear. In point of fact, Harold Pinter directly tallied
Beckett’s most important starting points with a schoolboy’s eagerness, but he hasn’t suc-
ceeded in convincing us that his X-ray cut is in any way better than that which we have
already seen in Beckett. The theatre of the absurd became so consistent that it has ceased
to be theatre. (Vukov Colić 1971)
After 12 performances, the production closed on 6th April 1971.

Pinter’s play Old Times was to have its premiere on 15th May 1973 at the
Theatre Etc in the translation by Sonja Bašić. However, Pinter had not given his
permission for the performance, so the premiere was postponed, and the play
was presented as “the first public dress rehearsal”2. Marija Grgičević’s article
“Prohibited Premiere” appeared in Večernji list on 15th May 1973. She praised the
director Relja Bašić, who also played Deely, as well as the leading actress Zdravka
Krstulović, who played Kate, and Neva Bulić as Anne. Grgičević wrote that
Pinter’s play has opened and in it nothing is revealed by the end, not because he wants
to play mind games with the audience’s curiosity, but in order to express elusive hap-
penings among people. Relationships between characters can be modified from perfor-
mance to performance, leaving more space to involve the viewers. In that way this well
received play could develop after the performance ban is lifted. (Grgičević 1973)
2 I myself attended the “third public dress rehearsal“, so I learned this expression on the
spot – at the theatre; it was the idea of the Theatre Etc artistic director Vjeran Zuppa
in order to go on with the show until the ban was lifted.
96 Acija Alfirević
There were no other reviews, and after Pinter gave his permission, Old Times
remained on the Theatre Etc stage until 30th March 1974 when it closed after 17
shows.
The Birthday Party was performed on 17th May 1975 in Split. The production
took place in a former cinema replacing the stage of the Croatian National Theatre,
which was under reconstruction after the fire in 1970. In his review “A Mature Pro-
duction” published in Slobodna Dalmacija on 20th May 1975, the distinguished
critic Anatolij Kudrjavcev noted that “[o]ne thing is almost certain: Pinter’s part in
the chaos of avant-garde drama, relevant to antidrama, is very prominent and priv-
ileged, and his ideas are innovations of high quality, since they cannot be attributed
to an Ionescoan disguise of sense into nonsense, or to the Beckettian absurd, or to
contemporary rituals” (Kudrjavcev 1975). Kudrjavcev praised the actors and di-
rector Vlatko Perković; however, he expressed his opinion that the performance –
despite its many interesting qualities – would not find a wide audience. Kudrjavcev
was right – after 3 performances The Birthday Party closed on 25th May 1975.
Theatre Etc in Zagreb staged Pinter’s No Man’s Land on 21st March 1976,
directed by Tomislav Radić. In Večernji list, Marija Grgičević published her
article “Pinter – Our Fellow-citizen?”. She stressed that “[w]ith the exception of
The Homecoming directed by Georgij Paro, we have not had a more successful
Pinter performance in Zagreb than this one. Its success lies in precise direction
and excellent acting” (Grgičević 1976). Though Grgičević found Antun Šoljan’s
translation brilliant, she was unsure why the translator had adapted the play to
seem as if it were taking place in Zagreb. She concluded that “Pinter’s verbal
interest in Croats, or even Slovenians in this production seemed extremely un-
convincing” (Grgičević 1976).
On 9th April 1976 in Večernji list, a short news item “Harold Pinter in Zagreb”
appeared, signed with the initials M. J. Invited by the Theatre Etc, Pinter had
come to see No Man’s Land. At the end of this announcement, the author wrote
the following: “We have been informed that Pinter is in Zagreb strictly ‘under
cover’ and that he is not prepared to reveal to journalists the reasons behind his
brief visit to our city” (J. 1976). No Man’s Land closed on 30th March 1977, after
32 performances.
Two years later, on 26th October 1979, Betrayal was performed in Zagreb
by Teatar u gostima (Visiting Theatre) – a theatre group which does not have
its own theatre building, but travels and ‘visits’ other places. The performance
took place at the Mala dvorana (Small Auditorium) of the Vatroslav Lisinski con-
cert hall in Zagreb. The director was Georgij Paro. In his review “Pinter’s View
Backwards” published in Vjesnik on 31st October 1976, the distinguished critic
Dalibor Foretić wrote that
[l]ooking back [i.e. the play starts from the end of the plot to the beginning] Pinter
came close to melodrama. /…/ There is very little of the young Pinter remaining in
this drama. It lacks the cold sharpness by which he disclosed waste, in everyday life,
in our dreary life. There are none of the absurd turning-points he used so brilliantly to
provide counterpoint to the banality of his characters’ lives. Pinter’s famous pauses and
silences, which called to be filled with meaning and physical action, have become worn
out. The play is Pinteresquely well written; however, it is a dramaturgy which continues
to reproduce itself without questioning the reason for its existence, without questioning
the world in which it lives. Since it is well written, this play can be a challenge, but only
for the actor’s artistry. This, as well the author’s reputation, probably was the reason that
the Visiting Theatre chose to perform Betrayal. Those who like actors on parade can
find comfort in an insignificant Pinter. (Foretić 1979)
There were more reviews of this very play, and all were favourably disposed
towards the actors. Betrayal lasted for a record 88 performances, the last one in
Sarajevo on 1st June 1981.
From 1984 to 2007

On 20th March 1984, Pinter’s play The Caretaker opened at the Theatre Club
of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb. There was one review, published
in Vjesnik on 24th March 1984, entitled “From the Alienated World” written by
B. Ježić. The author noted that
The Caretaker opens with the typical Pinter dilemma of a human being’s place and ex-
istence in a dangerous world, a world which knocks at the doors of closed rooms and
houses like this one, in which an old tramp Davies finds himself with brothers Aston
and Mick. And it is never known who in this play helps whom and who does nothing
to help since their fates are – as usual in Pinter – unknown and unexplainable. /…/ This
Pinter play demands relatively strict obedience to the canons of this kind of theatre –
which develops and builds with meticulous work on details, from speech and text to
articulation, gesture and every movement, costumes, props etc. (Ježić 1984)
Ježić also found that Mladen Škiljan’s direction was not entirely successful for
this performance and that the tempo of the performance was uneven. On the
other hand, he thought the acting was praiseworthy, as well as the work of the
costumer and the scenographer. The Caretaker closed on 15th May 1985 after
21 shows.
On 22nd April 1988 The Dumb Waiter had its premiere on the Small Stage
of the Marin Držić theatre in Dubrovnik under the direction of Marin Carić.
The performance was also shown at the Dubrovnik Summer Festival, held at the
Revelin fortress. After a total of 24 shows in the theatre and at the Summer Fes-
tival, The Dumb Waiter closed on 6th November 1989. Unfortunately, there are
98 Acija Alfirević
no reviews of that production since, sadly, the archives were burned in the recent
war when Dubrovnik was attacked on 6th December 1991.
Prior to the war, on 19th January 1991, Mountain Language had its Croatian
as well as Yugoslavian premiere at the Teatar Bursa in Dubrovnik. The initiator of
this production was the theatre’s dramaturge and a renowned poet Milan Milišić,
who also translated the play, while it was directed by Želimir Orešković. After
7 shows the performance closed. Sadly, Milan Milišić was killed on 5th October
1991 when an enemy shell fell on his apartment during the siege of Dubrovnik.
There are no reviews of that production either, since they were burned later, on
6th December 1991.
During the war, Pinter’s plays were not produced; however, after a long hiatus
the Croatian National Theatre in Rijeka staged Betrayal. The initiator of this pro-
duction was Mani Gotovac, a former theatre critic who in the meantime had
become the artistic director of the Rijeka Croatian National Theatre. At the press
conference before the premiere, Gotovac stressed how in the theatre world the
year 2004 would be marked for Harold Pinter: in March of that year Pinter an-
nounced that he would no longer write for the theatre. Soon after that he was
presented with the most prestigious theatre award, the Premio Europa. Gotovac
said that “[t]here is something in his writing that rouses an interest in him today
as it did in the seventies of the last century, when in Zagreb alone six of his plays
were staged. Pinter created something that is difficult to realize in acting and
interpreting, but behind everything said in his plays lies human drama in its
entirety” (1967). The premiere was on 30th June 2004 for the opening of the
First Rijeka summer festival – Rijeka Summer Nights in the Winter Garden of
the Grand Hotel Bonavia. The young director was Marin Lukanović, who had
just graduated in cinema in Bologna and for whom this was the first theatre pro-
duction. The actors were the most distinguished of the Rijeka drama ensemble
and, interestingly enough, their mentor was Neva Rošić, who in 1964 had played
Sarah in Pinter’s The Lover. The reviews were many and all very favourable. How-
ever, the theatre writer Kim Cuculić in Novi list on 3rd July 2004 takes issues with
Vladimir Gerić’s translation of the play. Gerić – whose translation was used by
the Visiting Theatre production as well – translated the word ‘betrayal’ as ‘deceit’
[i.e. ‘Prijevara’ in Croatian], while Cuculić thought that it should have been trans-
lated appropriately [with ‘izdaja’] (Cuculić 2004), a point with which I also agree.
After the summer festival, Betrayal was shown on the theatre stage during the
repertory season 2004/2005 as well as 2005/2006 and on tours in Istria – in Pula
etc. It was closed on 8th November 2006; altogether it was staged 17 times.
The next Pinter production in Croatia occurred in the small town of Vinkovci,
in the North-Eastern part of the country. In their Gradsko kazalište Joza Ivakić
(The Joza Ivakić Town Theatre), a young director and actor from Osijek, Vjekoslav
Janković, staged The Dumb Waiter for the 2006/2007 repertory season. In an inter-
view entitled “Sex, Drugs and Paid Assassins” published in Glas Slavonije (The Voice
of Slavonia) on 8th December 2006, the day of the premiere, Janković stated that
with regard to the current situation in our society, the play is very contemporary.
For this reason, he changed nothing in the text (Smajić 2006). In the same news-
paper, the journalist A. Smajić noted the unusual approach of employing actors
who spoke different dialects – although both of them were actors from Bosnia:
one spoke Bosnian, while the other spoke Newshtocavian (Croat. novoštokavski)
Croatian. The director obviously used the different dialects to heighten the effect
of miscommunication. The performance was closed in June 2007, after 6 shows.
2012
The most recent Pinter production to date in Croatia was in Dubrovnik on
16 March 2012. In the Teatar Bursa, a small stage of the Teatar Marin Držić, a
Kenyan director Lawrence Kiiru, who lives and works in Croatia, staged The
Lover in a new translation by Vladimir Gerić. In his article “Marital Games with
Consequences” the critic Davor Mojaš wrote that The Lover was “a typical Pin-
teresque witty analysis of stability of marital rituals in which the protagonists try
in vain to find again passion, desire and a reason for growing close to each other,
which becomes just an alibi for introspective reconsideration of the essence of
marital relationships. /…/ Their well established petty bourgeois daily routine
arrangement/scheme, hypocritical appreciation of rights to public and secret
privacy as well as perseverance in parallel lives work until the moment when all
reasons are exhausted, when they see the emptiness and lose all motifs. Then, in
the Beckettian silence and loneliness of the bedroom, everything returns to its
possible beginning” (Mojaš 2012). Mojaš then praised director Lawrence Kiiru
and the actors Glorija Šoletić and Frane Perišin, as well as the other contributors –
set designer Stefano Katunar and costume designer Zjena Glamočan, and par-
ticularly the music arranger Paola Dražić Zekić.3
Conclusion
This piece of research shows that Harold Pinter’s plays were produced in
Croatia soon after their world premiers/openings in the United Kingdom. At
3 I attended the performance on 21st March and found the music enchanting, although
I also give credit to the director, actors and set/costume designers.
100 Acija Alfirević
the very beginning the critics were not favourable to Pinter’s plays; nevertheless,
from their quoted reviews it is evident that they approached his plays with inter-
est and serious engagement. The critics often compared Pinter to Beckett and
Ionesco as well as Kafka, but they also recognized his distinguished poetics and
an authentic dramatic voice. Over time the critics became more sympathetic/
used to Pinter on Croatian stages and therefore more favourable. This was par-
ticularly clear in reviews of Pinter’s plays written and produced in the 1970s (Old
Times, No Man’s Land, Betrayal), which were also rather popular with audiences.
It is symbolic that Mountain Language, a play which deals with oppression of
languages, was staged in Dubrovnik just before the war and the disintegration
of Yugoslavia. In former Yugoslavia, a multinational country, different languages
were treated as mountain languages and often forbidden as well as subjected to
change. After the war, Betrayal was staged in Rijeka, and then The Dumb Waiter
was produced in Vinkovci, a town which, like Dubrovnik, had also been attacked
and badly damaged during the war, and its production in a new political context
after the war found a new meaning and proved the depth and power of that very
play. The most recent production of The Lover in Dubrovnik and the fact that the
show is sold out until the end of this theatre season showed that Pinter is estab-
lished among Croatian theatre goers as a distinguished and unique playwright in
the context of European contemporary drama.
Acknowledgments
My main reserch was done at the Institute for the History of Croatian Litera-
ture, Theater and Music as well as the National and University Library in Zagreb;
but I also spoke to theatre people such as Boris Senker, Vjeran Zuppa, Tomislav
Radić, Vlatko Perković, Želimir Mesarić, Vjekoslav Janković, Želimir Orešković,
Hrvoje Ivanković, Lawrence Kiiru and the translator Nada Šoljan as well as the
writer Kim Cuculić, from all of whom I got very valuable information. The clerks
in the press-offices and archives of theatres in Dubrovnik, Rijeka and Vinkovci
helped with their material, as well. For all that I am deeply grateful. I also want to
thank my friend Linda Scatton from the USA who was the first to have a look at
the outline of this chapter while it was still in the process of composition.
References
Cuculić, K. 2004. Nepodnošljiva lakoća intimnog rasapa. Novi list, 3 Jul.
F., D. 1964. Dvosmislenost govora. Vjesnik, 4 Nov.
Foretić, D. 1979. Pinterov pogled unatrag. Vjesnik, 31 Oct.
Frndić, N. 1969. Izvrsni Dulčić i Vidović. Borba, 17 Apr.

Gotovac, M. 1967. Između šutnje i govora, između igre i zbilje. Telegram, 24 Feb.
Grgičević, M. 1964. Zanimljiva predstava, ali za malu scenu. U zatvorenom krugu.
Večernji list, 7 Nov.
–, 1967. Psihologija stada. Večernji list, 21 Feb.
–, 1969. Aplauz Vidoviću. Večernji list. Acquired in Croatian National Theatre
archives of Ivan pl. Zajc in Rijeka on 28 Jun 2004.
–, 1971. Mimoilazni dijalozi. Večernji list, 19 Feb.
–, 1973. Premijera pod „zabranom“. Večernji list, 15 May.
–, 1976. Pinter naš sugrađanin? Večernji list. Acquired in Croatian National Theatre
archives of Ivan pl. Zajc in Rijeka on 28 Jun 2004.
J., M. 1976. Harold Pinter u Zagrebu. Večernji list, Friday, 9 Apr: 7
Kudrjavcev, A. 1975. Zrelo ostvarenje. Slobodna Dalmacija, 20 May: 7
Lipovčan, S. 1964. Nesporazumi razumijevanja. Studentski list, 11 Nov.
M., A. 1964. Pjesnik šutnje. Večernji list, 3 Nov.
Mojaš, D. 2012. Bračne igre s posljedicama. 19 Mar.
Puljizević, J. 1964. Kolekcija ljubavnika. Vjesnik, 7 Nov.
–, 1967. Tragični humor. Vjesnik, 21 Feb.
Smajić, A. 2006. Sex, Drugs and Paid Assassins. An interview with V. Janković,
the director of the play. Glas Slavonije, 8 Dec.
Vukov Colić, D. 1971. Slijepo crijevo avangarde. Vjesnik, 19 Feb.
Z., Z. 1964. Kolekcija i Ljubavnik Harolda Pintera-prva premijera Zagrebačkog
dramskog kazališta, Borba, 5 Nov.
Benjamin Keatinge1
Chapter Seven
Pinter in Macedonia: Productions, Translations
and Critical Reception
Introduction
Considering its size (25,713 sq km) and relatively low population (2 million),
the Republic of Macedonia offers a surprisingly rich and vibrant theatrical tra-
dition and infrastructure. Leading theatre scholar, Jelena Lužina, notes in her
essay “Theatre in Search of a New Identity” that Macedonia’s “long and rich
cultural history – primarily an urban one – is made up of a dense mingling of
different languages and traditions (Macedonian, Turkish, Wallachian, Hebrew,
Albanian …)” while “Its present reality is dominated by what is known as the
process of transition, which characterizes all ex-communist countries…” (2004).
The purpose of this chapter is to show that in the midst of this transition – and
following independence in 1991 and war in neighbouring Kosovo in the late
1990s, plus its own brief conflict in 2001 – the Macedonian stage has found a
space for the dramatic work of Harold Pinter. Indeed, while Pinter’s impact and
dissemination may have been slow, especially in the pre-independence period,
there is strong evidence to suggest that Pinter’s work has established itself in
the Macedonian repertoire, while also impacting upon important Macedonian
dramatists writing before and after 1991. It would seem that the mid-1990s, as
this research will argue, marks the point of “lift-off ” for Pinter in Macedonia.
Writing in 1994, the critic and poet Ivan Ivanovski tried to establish reasons
“for such a long period of neglect of Pinter’s dramaturgical works on the profes-
sional drama stages in Macedonia” (Ivanovski 1994). He cites the challenges of
performing Pinter as well as Pinter’s supposed “difficulty” and “uncertainty” as
possible obstacles. However, it may be that the higher levels of cultural exchange
in the post-1991 period are an important factor in the overcoming of Pinter’s
perceived difficulty and the willingness of translators and directors to engage
with his work. What is certain in that by the time Pinter was awarded the Nobel
Prize in 2005, most theatregoers alert to developments in contemporary drama
1 The author would like to thank the editors of Blesok online journal, Issue XVII, Jan-
Feb 2014, where this essay first appeared.
104 Benjamin Keatinge
would have had at least the chance to see Pinter performed in Macedonian. In-
deed, the Nobel award in 2005 proved to be a stimulus for new publications and
productions, all of which will be traced in this piece of research.
Looking back over the decades since the first London production of The
Birthday Party in 1958, it may seem surprising that the first Pinter production
officially recorded in Macedonia (then, of course, part of Yugoslavia) took place
nearly two decades later on 11 November 1975 in Veles, where the Youth Drama
Studio produced The Homecoming. As Riste Stefanovski notes, it is somewhat
ironic that the first Pinter production was staged in a town where “in 1967 the
professional theatre was closed and stopped from working” (2005). Following
this, another period of 18 years was to pass before the next Pinter production on
Macedonian soil in 1993, when Old Times was produced in the National Theatre
“Anton Panov” in Strumica, south-eastern Macedonia. We see, therefore, region-
al and amateur theatre groups taking the lead where more established ensembles
shied away from the challenge. Notably, only in 1995, nearly forty years after The
Birthday Party was first staged in London, did Pinter feature in the prestigious
Macedonian National Theatre, Skopje where The Birthday Party was produced
on 15 February 1995 under the direction of Vasil Hristiv (and in his translation
of the text) to a generally acclaimed production, which ran for 35 performances
and featured on tour in Kochani, eastern Macedonia, Strumica and in Belgrade,
Serbia as well as Montenegro. These observations provide substance to Riste Ste-
fanovski’s claim that “Pinter overtook the theatres in Macedonia starting from
the periphery and penetrating to the centre” (2005, italics in original).
The comparative slowness of Pinter’s influence in Macedonia might be con-
sidered in the light of the following points of reference. According to poet and
Pinter translator Bogomil Gjuzel, “Pinter came a bit late in Macedonia… much
later than in Slovenia and Croatia, about the same time as in Serbia” (2011).
Comparison with Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is instructive. As we now
know, Beckett’s play took the world by storm and, according to a recent essay on
its production history, it was first performed as early as May 1954 in Belgrade,
Serbia as an underground production, banned by the authorities, only a year or
so after its famous opening in Paris at the Théâtre de Babylon on 5 January 1953
and before equivalent productions in London or the United States (Todorović
2011, 10). The first official production in Yugoslavia had to wait until 17 De-
cember 1956, when the well-known ensemble Atelier 212 produced “the first
Godot in a socialist country” in Belgrade (capital of what is now independent
Serbia), identical in all major respects to the underground production of 1954
(Todorović 2011, 10). As Predrag Todorović suggests, the forbidden quality of
the first Godot production in Yugoslavia added to the intellectual excitement it
Pinter in Macedonia 105
occasioned, and so “Godot’s influence among Belgrade intellectuals and artists

was inestimably greater” (2011, 10). It is certain that many Macedonian intellec-
tuals, such us the poet Bogomil Gjuzel, were aware of and had seen the original
Atelier 212 production. However, the first official performance on what was to
become Macedonian soil took place in Veles at the National Theatre “Jordan
Hadji Konstantinov Djinot” on 18 December 1965 under the direction of Bore
Angelovski, nearly ten years after the national première in Belgrade.
Therefore, we must recall the centralised cultural base of Yugoslavia and com-
pare the epoch-making excitement of Godot in Belgrade with the more gradual
dissemination of Beckett’s and Pinter’s oeuvres in a Macedonian context. In
case we might think that Beckett’s major impact has overshadowed or lessened
the strength of Pinter’s artistic impact, we might consider the case of Pinter in
Russia. An essay by Charles Evans on “Pinter in Russia” from The Cambridge
Companion to Harold Pinter serves to remind us that Pinter’s drama can gener-
ate the very same samizdat excitement in a socialist and post-socialist context
as Godot created in Yugoslavia. On the evidence which Evans has unearthed, it
would seem that an underground (podpole) production of Pinter’s The Caretaker,
running in different guises and locations from 1972 to 1987, had a major impact
on theatre audiences and practitioners in what was then the Soviet Union. Evans
calls this “the most important production of a Pinter play to be staged in Russia”
(2009, 171) and attributes its impact to the honesty and integrity of the produc-
tion, “which did not set out with an easy answer to the problems of identity
and power contained in the play” (2009, 171). Apparently, during its fifteen-year
existence, this production (which changed and metamorphosed through time)
became almost legendary in the intellectual underground of Moscow in the run-
up to the glasnost era. According to Evans, this production,
… played in libraries, basements, studio theatres and university rooms, sometimes to

large audiences, sometimes to a mere handful of spectators, usually acclaimed, often mis-
understood, invariably enjoyed… At least until the 1980s, performances were rarely ad-
vertised and news of performances was spread by word of mouth only. (Evans 2009, 172)
There is no corresponding “underground Pinter” in Yugoslavian theatre his-

tory, but this is clearly not because Pinter’s plays cannot or should not be read as
politically subversive or politically engaged; the Russian example proves other-
wise. Rather, after the initial impact of Godot in Belgrade, news of which would
have reached theatre circles in Skopje, Beckett and Pinter were picked up less
quickly and disseminated more gradually in what is now Macedonia.
It may also be, as Jelena Lužina speculates, that the official structures of
Macedonian theatre, both during the socialist and post-socialist eras, have
militated against the production of avant-garde drama in general and Pinter in

particular. Despite having a “relatively large number of professional theatre in-
stitutions (nine) within which 12 permanent troupes operate (ten for theatre,
one for ballet and one for opera)” (Lužina 2004), it is also clear that, according
to Lužina, “the existing model of theatrical organization suffers from being far
too ‘static’” (2004). If we compare the (literally) mobile, underground produc-
tions of The Caretaker in Russia with the Macedonian scene, we find that the old
socialist theatrical system where, in Lužina’s words, “actors are civil servants and
repertories must include … ‘a bit for everyone’” (2004), we can conclude that
Pinter’s entry into the mainstream repertoire was not helped by such a static,
State-sponsored infrastructure inherited from socialist days. As can be found
elsewhere, the concept of a “National Theatre” is often inhibiting rather than
enabling, especially in the production of plays in translation, including new
plays by non-national authors. We should not wonder, then, that Pinter’s gradual
emergence owes much to amateur and regional theatrical events, to festivals,
student productions and other mobile theatrical contexts. In what follows I will
attempt to offer a complete account of Pinter’s production and translation his-
tory in Macedonia, together with a more critical analysis of his literary impact
and also his presence within the Macedonian academy.2
Productions and Translations of Pinter in Macedonia

The first traceable record of Pinter in Macedonian has a somewhat samizdat
quality to it. Dating from 1965, and more precisely dated 3 June 1965, the same
day as the opening of The Homecoming at the Aldwych Theatre in London, we
find a typescript of The Homecoming, in the Macedonian language, which has
been deposited in the St Kliment Ohridski library, Bitola, southern Macedonia.
2 My information is based primarily on the production records generously shared with

me by Professor Jelena Lužina from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts at the University
Cyril and Methodius, Skopje and confirmed by additional information provided by
other individuals and through examination of printed sources. I am indebted equally
to Professor Rajna Koshka Hot of the Department of Comparative Literature, Uni-
versity Cyril and Methodius, Skopje for kindly answering my questions on Pinter and
also to Mr Todor Gajdov for his assistance with translation. I am grateful to the Pinter
translator and renowned Macedonian poet Bogomil Gjuzel for his recollections on
Pinter and for agreeing to be interviewed for this article. I am equally grateful to
Macedonian dramatist Goran Stefanovski for also sharing his thoughts on Pinter in
an interview. I am also grateful to Marija Dimovska for generously locating archival
materials held at the Kliment Ohridski Library, Bitola.
Translated as Vrakanje and clearly used as an acting script with prompts and
other marginalia, this text leaves no sign of the identity of the translator, nor
does it refer to any specific production for which it was used. The typescript sug-
gests that a Macedonian individual witnessed an early performance (perhaps the
opening night) of The Homecoming and decided to work on a translation of the
text. We may speculate that this was the text on which the 1975 production of
The Homecoming in Veles was based – the Youth Drama Studio performed The
Homecoming on 11 April 1975 at the National Theatre “Jordan Hadji Konstanti-
nov Djinot”, Veles – but we cannot be certain. Nor is it impossible that an earlier
production took place in Bitola, a city noted for the vibrancy of its cultural life.
This intriguing document provokes more questions than it answers, but it may
well be that the existence of this translation influenced the choice of production
of The Homecoming for the first recorded performance of Pinter in Macedonia.
One conclusion we are able to reach concerning the typescript of The Home-
coming is that it is illustrative of the existence of informal translations, which have
circulated amongst the theatrical community for the purposes of performance,
but which are nonetheless unpublished as official translations. The only widely
available published translations of Pinter in Macedonia at the present moment
(2012) are those by Bogomil Gjuzel of The Caretaker and The Lover, published
together as Domarot and Ljubovnikot in 2006 in Skopje in recognition of Pinter’s
Nobel Prize award. To this we can only add the translation of Betrayal by Ljubica
Arsovska (in Macedonian the play’s title is Neverstvo), which was published in
2003 as part of an anthology of British drama edited by Rajna Koshka Hot and
published in Skopje by Magor publishers. However, we can be certain that both
these translations existed and circulated in typescript long before they were pub-
lished. Gjuzel recalls doing his translations for the Drama Theatre, Skopje at a
much earlier date than 2006 and the production record affirms this. The first
recorded production of The Lover in Macedonia was at the Drama Theatre on
20 March 2003 where it featured as part of a drama students’ collage of plays
by Pinter, David Ives and Caryl Churchill. This solitary performance was fol-
lowed by more conventional productions of The Lover as a discrete play at the
National Theatre “Anton Panov”, Strumica in 2003 and at the National Theatre
in Kumanovo (a city north-east of Skopje) in 2007; the record also shows a dual
performance of Pinter’s The Lover with Beckett’s Happy Days on 30 November
2007 at the Macedonian National Theatre in Skopje. The Caretaker received its
Macedonian première at the National Theatre, Skopje on 16 June 2004 while Be-
trayal was first performed in 1996 at the Drama Theatre, Skopje, courtesy of the
Independent Artists Association TALIJA, presumably using Arsovska’s transla-
tion and under the direction of Ljupco Georgievski.
All of this goes to show that in the tight-knit setting of the Macedonian thea-
tre, formal or commercial publication is not always deemed necessary, or in-
deed commercially viable. Of Pinter’s three most famous, full-length plays, those
which established his reputation (The Birthday Party, The Caretaker and The
Homecoming) only The Caretaker is readily obtainable in Macedonian transla-
tion even though we know that versions of The Homecoming and The Birthday
Party exist as performance texts, a fact which is shown not only by the 1975
performance of The Homecoming, but in subsequent revivals of that play in Veles
(11 February 2006) and Strumica (7 September 2007), as well as director Vasil
Hristiv’s translation and production of The Birthday Party at the National Thea-
tre, Skopje in February 1995. We can also cite other examples of translations
that have been published in literary journals and subsequently been performed,
but also of published translations which appear not to have been staged. In
the former category, we find a translation of Old Times (Stari Vreminje) which
appeared (unsigned and unattributed) in the literary journal Kulturen Život
(“Cultural Life”) in 1988 and which was performed on six occasions in Decem-
ber 1993 at the National Theatre “Anton Panov”, Strumica and subsequently as
a “guest performance” on 18 January 1995 in Skopje. Of equal interest is Rajna
Koshka Hot’s translation of One for the Road (Aj’ Ushte po Edna in Macedonian),
which appeared in Kulturen Život in the autumn of 2001 and was performed in
National Theatre “Vojdan Cernodrinski” in Prilep on 3 March 2002. This was
followed by a subsequent performance of the same play in April 2003 by the
independent theatre group “Free Strike” at the Universal Hall, Skopje. There also
exist a couple of stray translations, published in journals, which have not been
performed, including Landscape (Pejzaž), translated by Violeta Derebanova and
Hariklija Trendafilovska and published in Kulturen Život in the summer of 2004
and Monologue (Monolog), translated by Vladimir Cvetkovski and published in
Sintezi, a literary journal, in 2006.
In order to complete this survey and draw some conclusions from it, we
should mention two productions of The Dumb Waiter by Theatre Studio Worm
in May 1990 at the Youth Centre, Skopje and in March 2002 in Strumica at the
National Theatre “Anton Panov”. The translation used for these productions re-
mains unpublished, but the title used – Bez Pogovor – meaning, roughly, “With-
out Afterwords” – is an inaccurate rendering of Pinter’s original title. Finally,
another production for which there is no corresponding published translation is
Family Voices, which received its Macedonian première in Prilep in 2000 with an
impressive fifty recorded performances.
From all of this information, we can agree with Riste Stefanovski’s assess-
ment that “Pinter’s work has been relatively well-represented in Macedonian
theatres” (2005). From slow beginnings, there have been a significant number
of productions through the mid-late 1990s and through the first decade of the
new millennium. We should take note, however, that there has been a signifi-
cant contribution made to this number by amateur, semi-professional as well as
student-based theatre and regional theatres. The 1995 production of The Birthday
Party at the Macedonian National Theatre, Skopje shows (as does the 2004
production of The Caretaker at the same venue) that Pinter has been belatedly
recognised as a dramatist of stature by the artistic establishment. Nonetheless,
the official statistics and official national productions do not tell the whole story.
Riste Stefanovski suggests that on the theatrical periphery there have been still
other productions not officially noted:
According to Blagoj Penov, executive director of the Amateur Drama Festival in
Kochani, amateur drama ensembles have performed drama texts from Pinter all across
the state [Stefanovski cites the daily paper Utrinski Vesnik 5-6 November 2005 as the
source of this information]. A precise proof cannot be found, but in the 1990s of the
past century, two texts have been put on stage: Mountain Language and The Caretaker.
At the 28th FAAT festival [Festival of Alternative and Amateur Theatres] at Kochani in
1992, the drama section from the high school “Nikola Karev” from Strumica presented
Mountain Language and won the grand-prix award at the festival. At the 32nd FAAT fes-
tival in Kochani in 1996, the Amateur Drama Workshop with the Culture House “Beli
Mugri” from Kochani performed The Caretaker and Darko Spasov received first prize
for the role of Mick. (Stefanovski 2005)
Thus we see that more informal productions of Pinter may have taken place
without being formally recorded or reviewed. Indeed, the present author has
only been able to source reviews for a handful of Pinter productions and these
in more prestigious venues such as the Macedonian National Theatre, Skopje or
the Drama Theatre, Skopje. However, in a diverse cultural scene, Pinter’s work
has found advocates and audiences at different levels within the cultural fabric
of Macedonia.
It is also gratifying that most areas of Pinter’s playwriting career have been
represented on the Macedonian stage including the major plays like The Birthday
Party, The Caretaker, The Homecoming and Betrayal as well as at least two late
political plays (One for the Road and Mountain Language) and two much earlier
plays (The Dumb Waiter and The Lover), as well as some examples of plays deal-
ing with memory (Old Times and the published translation of Landscape). We
might regard this as a representative spread of Pinter’s dramatic oeuvre.
It remains to be seen whether in the future there will be a collection of official
translations of Pinter’s plays in the Macedonian language. Clearly, most of the
major texts do exist in Macedonian and, with some editorial work, an edition
could be put together. Indeed, according to Rajna Koshka Hot, there was some
intention along these lines several years ago (in the late 1990s) but it came to
nothing. For Pinter’s presence to be consolidated in Macedonia, an authoritative
and inclusive Selected or Complete Plays is called for in Macedonian.
Critical Response to Pinter in Macedonia

Another way of measuring Pinter’s impact in Macedonia is to examine the
scholarly attention which his work has stimulated and the extent to which his
work may have influenced Macedonian writers. Commenting on the influence
of Pinter on the cultural scene in Macedonia, the theatre scholar Rajna Koshka
Hot states that,
… Pinter and Beckett (who are both relatively often performed in Macedonia) have had
an influence on Macedonian dramatists as representative writers of the “Theatre of the
Absurd” – for example, Waiting for Godot, or some of Beckett’s later texts, which include
pantomime – to a degree to which this type of theatre has influenced postmodern thea-
tre in general. It would be hard to name a specific contemporary Macedonian drama
writer because of the complexity of postmodern theatre and related issues of intertextu-
ality and metatextuality. (Koshka Hot 2011)
Macedonian poet Bogomil Gjuzel has also commented on the difficulty of

tracing precise lines of influence in the way, for example, which Beckett has been
cited as a direct influence on Pinter. Perhaps Koshka Hot is correct in pointing
to the more general trend in (post)modern drama, including what Martin Esslin
called Theatre of the Absurd, as being a more nebulous and diffuse set of theatri-
cal practices and theories that cannot be reduced to the direct influence of one
writer on another. Nonetheless, Bogomil Gjuzel hazards the suggestion of the
influence of Pinter’s The Homecoming on Macedonian dramatist Bratislav Dim-
itrov’s Glogov Zbun (A Hawthorn Bush) while there is some consensus amongst
those the present author has consulted that well-established dramatists Goran
Stefanovski, most famous for his 1979 play Proud Flesh (Mac. Divo Meso), and
Dejan Dukovski, author of the anarchic Powder Keg and Who the Fuck Started
All This?, have followed in a direction which Beckett and Pinter forged. Indeed,
Stefanovski, who wrote his MA thesis on the stage directions in Samuel Beckett’s
drama, has commented on how the example of Pinter, alongside Beckett and
David Mamet has been important for him. Stefanovski, who studied at Belgrade’s
Drama Academy in the early 1970s, comments on the influence on his genera-
tion of an anthology titled The Absurd Drama which included Pinter’s The Dumb
Waiter in Serbian. He remarks that beneath the surface of Pinter’s well-made
plays, he discerns the over-arching influence of Franz Kafka as precursor to the
Drama of the Absurd so that we can view “Pinter as an expression of Kafka ap-
plied to the well-made play” (Stefanovski 2012).
As far as scholarly work on Pinter is concerned, the output within the Mac-
edonian academy has been limited. Rajna Koshka Hot stands out as a scholar
whose reputation as an authority on Elizabethan/Jacobean drama is seconded by
her work on modern British theatre. Indeed, her book English Drama (Angliska
Drama) might be regarded as representative of her range of scholarly interests,
including as it does a section on Elizabethan/Jacobean authors (Shakespeare and
Christopher Marlowe among them) as well as a section on modern/contempo-
rary British drama and with a final section of feminist theoretical approaches to
drama. This book contains all of Koshka Hot’s published scholarship on Pinter,
including the excellent essay “The Fabric of Character, the Fabric of the Text:
Female Characters in Pinter’s Plays” previously published in Kulturen Život in
2001 as well as the essay “Harold Pinter and Postmodern Theatre”, which first
appeared in Kulturen Život in 2006. To these essays we should add two more:
“English Renaissance Drama/The Theatre of the Absurd/Physical Theatre: A
Few Comparisons” and “On The Unnamable: The Plays of Samuel Beckett”
both of which feature discussion of Pinter and are to be found in English Drama
(Angliska Drama). Most of these essays serve the important function of famil-
iarising Macedonian readers with some of the innovations and issues raised
by dramatists like Pinter, Beckett, Tom Stoppard and Eugène Ionesco. Just as
early commentators in the UK and USA tended to lump these writers together
in various formations, sometimes under Esslin’s convenient badge of Theatre of
the Absurd, there is a tendency amongst Macedonian authors to see similarities
where there are also important differences. An example of such an approach in
Anglo-American scholarship would be the final chapter of Bernard F. Dukore’s
book Harold Pinter, published in 1982. Dukore relates Pinter’s work indiscrimi-
nately to virtually every modern dramatist who has made an impact on the Euro-
pean or American stage: John Osborne, Beckett, T.S. Eliot, Noel Coward, George
Bernard Shaw, August Strindberg, Anton Chekhov, Arthur Miller, Maurice
Maeterlink and W.B. Yeats (Dukore 1982). Faced with such a list of names, the
uninitiated reader is likely to be confused and misled. While Anglo-American
scholars move towards more detailed and specialised readings of dramatists like
Beckett and Pinter, Macedonian scholarship is still evolving towards greater
specificity and precision as the reading public familiarise themselves with these
by now canonical dramatists.
It was in this introductory spirit that a special Pinter edition of the journal
SUM: Spisanie za Umetnost (literally, “Magazine for Art”) came out in 2005
shortly after Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize. This edition, perhaps the most
complete introduction to Pinter published in the Macedonian language, includes

four poems, an interview with Mel Gussow from December 1971, a biographi-
cal summary of Pinter’s career courtesy of Martin Esslin, the chapter mentioned
above by Bernard Dukore on “The Place of Pinter” as well as Peter Hall’s re-
flections on directing Pinter, all of these translated into Macedonian. For good
measure, there is an editorial by Trajce Kacarov, who identifies Pinter as “a true
original” and “the wittiest drama writer in the British theatre” (Kacarov 2005)
and also a brief series of aperçus titled “Pinter On…” together with a compact, if
somewhat arbitrary list of “Twenty Things About Pinter”. It is clear from these
details that this publication is aimed at the general reader with little or no pre-
vious knowledge of Pinter and the editors’ choice of Anglophone materials is
clearly made on the assumption that the reader will be new to Pinter.
Another cultural journal Kulturen Život, noted above for publishing transla-
tions of Old Times, Landscape and One for the Road as well as Ivan Ivanovski’s
article “Pinter’s Drama on the Macedonian Professional Stage” in 1994, chose to
mark Pinter’s Nobel Prize award with an issue in January-May 2006 where they
published a Macedonian translation of David Hare’s Guardian article of Friday 14
October 2005, hailing the Nobel committee’s sagacity in choosing Pinter. In the
same 2006 edition of Kulturen Život, interested readers could also read Koshka
Hot’s essay “Harold Pinter and Postmodern Theatre”. The only other journal
with a consistent interest in Pinter has been Sovremenost (“Modern Times”),
which has published reviews of The Lover (1998), The Birthday Party (1995),
Betrayal (1996) and Old Times (1994) variously written by Ivan Ivanovski, Borče
Grozdanov and Todor Kuzmanov.
In his Afterword to his translation of The Caretaker and The Lover, the poet
Bogomil Gjuzel aptly hit upon the paradoxes of Pinter’s drama. This short essay
titled “Searching for the Real” (“Vo Potraga po Vistinskoto”) acknowledges the
compelling nature of Pinter’s drama which, amidst its realism and deliberate
banality, reaches towards a kind of mysterious transcendence, so that the audi-
ence can be transfixed by a play which, Gjuzel reminds us, “is about a homeless
man and two brothers who make him their caretaker” (Gjuzel 2006). It is an
intuition confirmed by Goran Stefanovski’s comment that, for example, a place
like Sidcup in The Caretaker functions as a kind of “mythical zone” and “is not
somewhere you can get to” (Stefanovski 2012). This realism and its poetic pos-
sibilities are, of course, also evident in Pinter’s use of the English language which
is, on the one hand, “full of linguistic rubbish and empty formulations” (Gjuzel
2006, citing Martin Esslin) while on the other, it reaches poetic heights out of the
detritus of modern urban living. Gjuzel is sensitive to London idioms used in
The Caretaker, but claims that the “many expressions, nuances and ambiguities
[used by the characters] are all literally untranslatable in any other language”
(2006). Goran Stefanovski also comments that the translator of Pinter into con-
temporary Macedonian faces “insurmountable obstacles”; in particular, he states
that “the vernacular used by Pinter is hard to reproduce [in Macedonian] with-
out rewriting” (Stefanovski 2012). Furthermore, for Stefanovski, the “informed
evasion” and “evasion and fog of language” sometimes used by Pinter characters
is difficult to render in Macedonian, a fact which is related to how the vernacular
functions in Macedonian (2012). Even though Macedonian is a language rich
in dialects and regional variations, there is no direct equivalent to the London
speech found especially in early Pinter. This is one reason why, in Stefanovski’s
words, “the flow of dialogue is hard to reproduce” (2012). In addition, Stefanovs-
ki remarks that “when the vernacular becomes poetic, it is more than just dialect
or banter” (2012), and this is another obstacle for the would-be Pinter translator
in Macedonia. It seems that reproducing Pinter’s poetry of the vernacular in an-
other language is not an easy task.
These comments on the language of Pinter’s plays are related to Pinter’s
statement in “Writing for Myself ”, which serves as a Preface to Plays Two, that
“what goes on in my plays is realistic, but what I’m doing is not realism” (Pinter
1991a, ix). Just as Pinter’s vernacular is apt to “take flight” into the realm of the
poetic, so his realistic settings and characters follow a similar path into the poet-
ic. This might serve as a useful guideline to how students and audiences respond
to Pinter’s plays all over the world, including Macedonia. The present writer has
taught Pinter successfully at university level in Macedonia, and it is in trying
to account for that success that this essay began life. It may be that students are
drawn in by the seeming solidity of Pinter’s dramatic situations – two men in
a room, or one man in a room, surrounded by everyday objects – only to be
transfixed by the way in which Pinter uses the characters’ interaction to present
something resonantly poetic in the midst of the everyday. As Gjuzel concludes:
We can say that there is a spirit hovering over his opus, a predator spirit who seems even
stronger under the discipline of form, or wearing a black suit. The essence of his special
attraction is in the fact that you are sitting in each play he has written with a certain ex-
pectation of the unexpected. And you never know what is about to happen. (Gjuzel 2006)
Pinter in the Macedonian Classroom

To conclude this overview of Pinter in Macedonia, it is worth hazarding a
few remarks on Pinter’s place in the higher education curriculum in Macedonia
as well as making a few impressionistic observations on the present writer’s at-
tempts to teach Pinter in the Balkans. Pinter is taught at Cyril and Methodius
University, Skopje, which is the main state-funded university in Macedonia,

where students can encounter Pinter in the postgraduate course in British Dra-
ma taught by Rajna Koshka Hot, or in the Faculty of Dramatic Arts on the un-
dergraduate course in World Drama, or in other forms within the Department
of Comparative Literature at Cyril and Methodius University. The fact that this
University has by far the highest intake of English language and literature stu-
dents in the country means that their inclusion of Pinter in the curriculum is
a significant move towards disseminating Pinter’s work amongst literature and
drama students in Macedonia. The present author has not had the opportunity
to gather data from other universities which exist outside Skopje – in Stip and in
Bitola, for example – but it is possible to say that Pinter is taught in the author’s
home institution of South East European University, Tetovo, Macedonia which
is a private, multi-ethnic University, founded in 2001, catering for the Albanian
student population of Macedonia on the western side of the country. The follow-
ing comments are an impressionistic attempt to evaluate the impact of Pinter in
one particular classroom (the writer’s own) in Macedonia.
At South East European University, Pinter’s work features on the syllabus for
Modern/Postmodern Literature, a course which students encounter in the fifth
semester of their three-year BA degree in English Language and Literature. As
part of this course, students can sample modern drama as represented by Samuel
Beckett (Krapp’s Last Tape) as well as Pinter in the shape of The Caretaker (1960)
or The Birthday Party (1958). It is usually helpful to show students the film ver-
sions of Pinter’s plays, including the noteworthy 1963 film production of The
Caretaker with Alan Bates as Mick, Donald Pleasance as Davies and Robert Shaw
as Aston. The dramatic rendering of this play in film tends to elicit greater appre-
ciation and response from students and to encourage a direct engagement with
the dramatic situation of the characters, aside from any over-arching theoretical
or allegorical interpretation of their situation. The scenic realities of the play
are something with which English language learners can engage directly. The
immediacy of the film renders social and historical contexts less important and
so the frequently-found lack of historical sense (at least in this teacher’s experi-
ence) among students, does not hinder student engagement with this particular
piece of drama. One might draw an analogy here with Beckett’s Endgame, a play
which Beckett masterfully de-contextualised even as he appears to allude to the
Holocaust and to the horrors of World War Two. In fact, Beckett was forced, by
persistent questioning by critics and commentators, “to insist on the extreme
simplicity of dramatic situation and issue” (Beckett 1983, 109) in a famous letter
to his American director Alan Schneider. The same insistence on the “extreme
simplicity of the dramatic situation” would also lead us to view The Caretaker
“realistically”, as being about two brothers and a homeless man in a room in west
London. From a pedagogical perspective, the apparent simplicity of the dramatic
situation can be a blessing so that students respond first to Mick, Davies and
Aston fighting their verbal battles in an untidy room, and only afterwards are
led towards more nuanced critical engagement with things like: power relations,
filial loyalties, verbal and gestural menace, unrealised dreams and the dilemmas
of identity which The Caretaker appears to be about.
Perhaps we can use a dash of academic jargon, taken from the principles of
the New Criticism, to demonstrate how some of the present writer’s students
in Macedonia were able to engage with Pinter’s play. The New Critics (who in-
cluded John Crowe Ransom, Cleanth Brooks and Allen Tate) warned against the
Intentional Fallacy and the Affective Fallacy. The Intentional Fallacy involves
too much emphasis on what the author thinks he is doing, and the Affective
Fallacy involves too much emphasis on the emotional and intellectual response
of the reader. In other words, if the poem is good enough, it exists as a formal
statement, the integrity of which must be respected as a first principle of criti-
cism, and the task of criticism becomes one of formal analysis of the poem’s own
properties. One might suggest that this is a useful way in which to analyse the
pedagogical value of a play like The Caretaker for non-Anglophone students.
Pinter has insisted in “Writing for the Theatre” that he writes for himself, or,
more precisely, he says: “basically my position has remained the same. What I
write has no obligation to anything other than to itself. My responsibility is not to
audiences, critics, producers, directors, actors or to my fellow men in general, but
to the play in hand, simply” (Pinter 1991b, viii). If Pinter himself grants his own
work its independent identity and autonomy, as this quotation suggests, then
perhaps the New Critical terminology is not inappropriate. For the students,
their immersion in The Caretaker came with few enough preconceptions. They
were not burdened with background information about Pinter’s life, or historical
context, nor did they necessarily find critical labels like Theatre of the Absurd
or “comedy of menace” helpful, and they were therefore free of any Intentional
Fallacy. Nor could they be said to have read themselves into or over-read the
play from a subjective standpoint in a way which might amount to an Affective
Fallacy. They were also highly resistant to any symbolical interpretation of the
play: for example, that the room is a symbolic refuge or that the Buddha de-
stroyed by Mick has any wider religious significance. Therefore, in some ways,
these students were an exemplary audience. They had no preconceptions, nor
did they bring any agenda to the play nor did they attempt to over-analyse it; they
were free of both the Intentional and Affective Fallacies. But they did respond to
the play on its own terms which, as Pinter has insisted, is simply: “a particular
human situation, concerning three particular people” (Tynan 1960). And they
showed a clear recognition of the power dynamics of the play, especially the re-
lationship between the two brothers, Mick and Aston, and the outmanoeuvring
of Davies by Mick. By respecting the autonomy of the play, these Macedonian
students were able to appreciate its overall dramatic statement without too much
guidance from their teacher.
Teaching The Birthday Party on the same Modern/Postmodern Literature
course proved equally fruitful. Students responded well to Pinter’s “transcendent
realism” even on this occasion picking up on some of the political implications
of Stanley’s interrogation and abduction by Goldberg and McCann. Based on
these experiences, one is led to conclude that Pinter is an especially good dra-
matic choice in teaching literature to non-native speakers of English. This is
partly because Pinter wears his cultural baggage lightly, and equally because of
the deliberately indistinct background to his characters’ existence. This takes us
back to one of Pinter’s early statements on his practise as a dramatist where he
comments:
A character on the stage who can present no convincing argument or information as to
his past experience, his present behaviour or his aspirations, nor give a comprehensive
analysis of his motives is as legitimate and as worthy of attention as one who alarmingly,
can do all these things … Given characters who possess a momentum of their own, my
job is not to impose upon them, not to subject them to a false articulation… (Pinter
1991b, ix-xii)
This insistence on both the autonomy of the play, and its characters, directs
our attention to the formal qualities of the drama and its plainly stated dramatic
situation. It discourages us from seeking meta-theatrical solutions or symbolic
meanings. Given this insistence on the play as its own statement and justifica-
tion, foreign students’ reaction to Pinter in the classroom would seem to confirm
the validity of Pinter’s attitude to his own writing. The students failed to find
mysteries where there were none to be found and their learning experience was
enhanced because of this.
Conclusion
Pinter’s status as a dramatist of world stature is confirmed by his reception
in Macedonia. We can see through his production and publication history and
his place in the academy in this small Balkan nation that Pinter has developed a
reputation in Macedonia which will no doubt evolve further in the twenty-first
century. As this division of the Harold Pinter on International Stages monograph
has shown, even during the more restricted cultural climate of Yugoslav times,
Pinter and Beckett achieved cross-cultural recognition. In the more open situa-
tion in Macedonia since 1991, Pinter’s cultural capital has continued to rise. His
canonical status is affirmed by the increasing number of productions as well as
publications about his work and by his inclusion in the university curriculum.
Even if Pinter’s language defies translators’ attempts to find local equivalents in
the vernacular Macedonian, his compelling dramatic scenarios have inspired
theatre practitioners to try. One awaits, therefore, a Selected / Collected Plays in
the Macedonian language to consolidate Pinter’s already prominent position in
Macedonian theatre.
References
Beckett, S. 1983. On Endgame: Extracts from Correspondence with Director
Alan Schneider. Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment.
Ed. Ruby Cohn. London: John Calder: 106-10.
Dukore, B.F. 1982. Harold Pinter. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Evans, C. 2009. Pinter in Russia. The Cambridge Companion to Harold Pinter. Ed.
Peter Raby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 170-94.
Gjuzel, B. 2011. Personal Interview with B. Keatinge, 2 Dec. Transcribed and
translated by Todor Gajdov.
–, 2006. Vo Potraga po Vistinskoto. Domarot; Ljubovnikot: Dve Drami by Harold
Pinter. Transl. Bogomil Gjuzel. Skopje: Slovo: 161-70. Translated by Todor
Gajdov.
Ivanovski, I. 1994. Pinterovata dramaturgija na makedonskite dramski sceni.
Kulturen Život 39, nos. 4-5 (Aug-Oct): 86-87. Translated by Todor Gajdov.
Kacarov, T. 2005. Harold Pinter – Vistinkiot Orginal. SUM: Spisanie za Umetnost
11, no. 48: 2. Translated by Todor Gajdov.
Koshka Hot, R. 2011. E-mail communication with B. Keatinge, 13 Nov. Trans-
lated by Todor Gajdov.
–, 2007. Angliska Drama. Skopje: Bigoss.
Lužina, J. 2004. Theatre in Search of a New Identity. Selected Essays. Skopje:
Blesok Publishing. Internet, accessed 16 Dec 2011.
Pinter, H. 1991a. Introduction: Writing for Myself. Plays Two, vii-xi. London:
Faber and Faber.
–, 1991b. Introduction: Writing for the Theatre. Plays One, vii-xiv. London:
Faber and Faber.
–, 1988. Stari Vreminje (Old Times). Unknown translator. Kulturen Život 33 nos.
5-6: 49-59.
–, 2001. Aj’ Ushte po Edna (One For the Road). Trans. Rajna Koshka Hot. Kul-
turen Život 46, nos. 3-4 (Sep-Dec): 107-15.
–, 2004. Pejzaž (Landscape). Trans. Violeta Derebanova and Hariklija Trenda-
filovska. Kulturen Život 49, no. 3 (Jun-Sep): 93-103.
–, 2006. Monolog (Monologue). Trans. Vladimir Cvetkovski. Sintezi: Makedonski
kniževen glasnik 3: 7-9.
Stefanovksi, G. 2012. Telephone interview with B. Keatinge, 24 Jan.
Stefanovski, R. 2005. Harold Pinter na Makedonskite sceni. Teatardski Glasnik,
no. 65: 66-72. Translated by Todor Gajdov.
Todorović, P. 2011. Godot in Belgrade. The Beckett Circle: Newsletter of the Samuel
Beckett Society 34, no. 2 (Autumn): 8-10.
Tynan, K. 1960. Interview with Harold Pinter. BBC Home Service, 28 Oct.
Andrea P. Balogh
Chapter Eight
Harold Pinter’s Authorial Image: Negotiating
between the West and Hungary
“Praise and insult refer to someone called Pinter.

I don’t know the man they’re talking about.
I know the plays, but in a totally different way,
in a quite private way.” (Harold Pinter)
Introduction
Harold Pinter often expressed how perplexed he felt about his public image
or about what we can call the “Pinter construct” (Zarhy-Levo 2008, 164). Pinter’s
perplexity seems to originate from the fact that his self-perception was different
from the authorial image cultivated by the critical interpretations of his plays.
The authorial image Pinter confronted has been forged by the critical reception
of his authorship in English. This research looks into the ways in which Pinter’s
authorial image was fashioned in Hungary during the Cold War era, or more
specifically in the 1960s. How did the political divide symbolized by the Iron
Curtain between the West and the communist Eastern Bloc affect the Hungarian
translation of Pinter’s works under socialism? How did Soviet-style cultural poli-
tics shape Pinter’s Hungarian public image? These questions are explored from a
comparative perspective, negotiating the politico-cultural differences informing
the interpretative practices in post-war Britain and Hungary.
In examining the authorial image-making process from the perspective of
translation as a socio-cultural practice, Stella Linn draws attention to the roles
ideology and social norms play in constructing an author’s identity in the process
of translating his or her works from one culture into another. According to Linn,
“the broader ideological context together with literary forces exert a decisive in-
fluence on what is being published and distributed, in translation or otherwise”
(2003, 56). The general pattern of the politics of translation is that “[w]hat does
not fit into the system is subject to repression from above,” among other things,
“in the form of critical reviews or exclusion from anthologies” (Linn 2003, 56).
Linn argues that the “extratextual sources” such as “paratexts,” (“prefaces and
footnotes included in the translated volume”) and “metatexts” (comments on
120 Andrea P. Balogh
“the work and/or the author /…/ presented independently”) actively partici-
pate in the authorial image-making process (2003, 57). From the perspective of
Linn’s model of the authorial image-making process, the Hungarian fashioning
of Pinter’s authorial identity is peculiar because there is more than a decade-long
temporal gap between the critical presentation of Pinter’s authorship as a rep-
resentative of contemporary Western drama in the early 1960s and the selected
Hungarian translation and theatrical productions of Pinter’s early plays in the
late 1970s. The temporal gap between the first Hungarian reviews of Pinter’s
authorship and the actual translations of his works indicates the exercise of polit-
ical control over the import and translation of contemporary Western culture(s)
into Hungary. What interests me here are the ways in which the metatexts (re)
presenting Pinter in the Hungarian, Soviet-style public sphere construct and
control Pinter’s authorial identity in advance of the translations and theatrical
interpretations of Pinter’s works.
Politics of Cultural Translation under Socialism

In 1979, in reviewing Rudiger Imhof ’s German monograph and Steven
H. Gale’s English monograph on Pinter, Andreas Fisher notes that “monographs
on Pinter abound” (1979, 529). As Imhof ’s “Eine Pinter-Bibliographie” shows, the
articles and books published on Pinter in the West were so numerous that their
listing required more than sixty pages (Fisher 1979, 529). By that year, ten plays
by Pinter had been published in Hungarian translation. Nine plays (The Birthday
Party, The Dumb Waiter, The Caretaker, The Lover, Tea Party, The Homecom-
ing, Landscape, Silence, and Old Times) had appeared in a collection, Drámák/
Dramas (Pinter 1975). The Hungarian translation of Pinter’s then very recent
play, Betrayal (1978) was published in Nagyvilág/Big World, the journal of world
literature, in 1979 (Pinter 1979, 1347-71). Pinter’s plays had just been discovered
in experimental theatre circles within the theatre establishment in the previous
year. The Caretaker was staged in Budapest as well as by the National Theatre of
Miskolc. As a consequence, 1978 was the year when, for the first and last time
in Hungary under socialism, a play by Pinter received relatively high visibility in
the press1.
1 The Hungarian success story of The Caretaker under socialism was facilitated by two
factors: the international reputation of the play and its suitability for a social(ist) real-
ist interpretation. The script was translated into Hungarian as early as 1965 and was
included in an anthology of contemporary English drama (Pinter 1965, 341-424). In
spite of the early translation of The Caretaker, the first Hungarian theatre productions
Harold Pinter’s Authorial Image 121
The first Hungarian reviews of Pinter’s authorship appeared in 1962 (Szántó

1962, 13-4; Mihályi 1962). The almost complete invisibility of Pinter as an author
in Hungarian theatre culture and as a subject of book-length critical studies in the
subsequent two decades evidences the exercise of political control over the public
visibility of Western culture in general and the Hungarian translation of Pinter’s
authorship in particular in an obvious way2. The absence of any public critical
debate on Pinter’s authorial identity can be seen as one of the socialist authoritar-
ian state’s strategies for censoring the import of Western authors into Hungarian
national culture. In close connection with this intention, the absence of critical
and scholarly works about Pinter and his work realizes the political desire for
isolating Hungarian national culture from the West. The Soviet-style Hungarian
official cultural politics conceived Anglo-American contemporary drama as a
foreign theatre whose inclusion in Hungarian culture should have been a source
of political anxiety and the subject of official inspection. Erzsébet Bogácsi con-
vincingly demonstrates that theatre productions were heavily censored by the
Agitation and Propaganda Board of the Central Committee even in the 1980s
(1991, 149-87). As she points out, “modern foreign drama was the hobby horse of
the board” and the absurd and/or the Anglo-American drama – especially Beck-
ett and Pinter – were the main targets of censorship (174)3. The general policy
of theatre censorship was to give “limited publicity” to Western contemporary
of the play took place only in 1978. The Caretaker received high publicity in the daily
press and theatre magazines because it was staged in Pesti Színház, a prestigious thea-
tre in Budapest. The Budapest premiere of The Caretaker is an exception in the Hun-
garian theatre history of Pinter’s plays under socialism. The official cultural politics
allowed the theatre productions of Pinter’s plays in small studio and room theatres
in provincial “cultural centres” in limited numbers (Bogácsi 1991, 149-87). The next
time that a Pinter play had high public visibility was three decades later, in 2006, when
Remembrance of Things Past was presented in the Hungarian National Theatre. This
theatre production was accompanied by a fashion show promoting the artistry of the
costume designer. It was the fashion show rather than Pinter’s authorship which made
this theatre production a media sensation, even though Pinter’s winning the Nobel
Prize in Literature provided the topicality of the theatre production.
2 The socialist critical construction of Pinter’s authorial image has remained almost
completely intact after the political changes, although Pinter’s plays have remained
relatively popular among theatre directors. Even today, there are no monographs on
Pinter’s life and/or work available in Hungarian. Critical essays attempting to revise
the socialist notion of Pinter’s authorship in light of Pinter’s Western career and cul-
tural reputation are also scarce (Balogh 2006).
3 All the English translations of the Hungarian texts are mine.
dramas by restricting the number of theatre performances to a minimum and to

small studio theatres (174). For instance, productions of No Man’s Land, Betrayal
and The Homecoming were banned by the board in 1981 (171-2).
The history of the Hungarian reception of Pinter’s works embodies the gen-
eral logic of the cultural politics of the authoritarian national state but unfolds
alongside the ideological inconsistencies emerging from the politico-histori-
cal tension between the Cold War forced (geo)political inclusion of Hungary
into the Eastern Bloc and the Hungarian civil or common notion of Hungary’s
(East-Central) European socio-cultural identity4. Therefore, on the one hand,
the political anxiety about the visibility of Pinter’s authorship in the Hungarian
cultural-public sphere follows the general paranoid patterning of the authoritar-
ian state’s attitude to the inclusion of foreign literature in national culture. For
instance, the political fear of foreign authors also governed the politics of cul-
tural import and translation in Nazi Germany or the Fascist Spanish state (Sturge
1999; Pegenaute 1999). As Luis Pegenaute observes, authoritarian states gener-
ally aim at maintaining the isolation of national culture (84-6). As he argues,
“exogenous influences” which are “not compatible with the system’s own values”
are seen as “dangerous because they may threaten the stability and preservation
of a unified and homogeneous system; which means the monopolization of pow-
er can be put at risk” (86). In the eyes of power, the import of foreign authors ap-
pears as undesirable because they represent socio-cultural values different from
the propagated ones. The differences within the general logic of the authoritar-
ian state system lie in the actual choices of what is stereotyped as the unwanted
representatives of foreignness, or the potential enemy of the authoritarian state’s
professed cultural and moral values. As is well-known, the Soviet-style authori-
tarianism of the Cold War era homogenized the West and all that it represented –
capitalism and bourgeois culture – as the negative counterpart and adversary of
the Eastern Bloc. The import of Western authors into the Hungarian Soviet-style
national culture was in fact seen as dangerous because the Hungarian transla-
tions could have empowered the (semi-)public expression of dissident views and
thrown the propagated self-image of socialism into question.
The Soviet-style authoritarian public sphere was secured by the military pres-
ence of the Soviet Union in Hungary. Externally imposed Soviet-Russian politi-
cal culture was perceived as a threatening foreign presence within the political
4 For critical discussion of the tension between the civil notion of Hungary’s European
socio-cultural belonging and the geopolitically forced Soviet-style identity, see Schöp-
flin and Wood 1989; Gal and Kligman 2000, 91-5; Falk 2003, 257-309.
borders of Hungary by the suppressed Hungarian civil or common society. As

George Schöpflin remarks, “in the name of an ideology that was far from hav-
ing attracted consensual support,” among other things, the one-party governed
state exercised control over the population in the form of “the brutalization of
society by the engendering of fear, the enforcement of new and indigestible pat-
terns of behaviour, the destruction of the language of public discourse and its
replacement by alien codes and thoroughgoing atomization” (1989, 24). The civil
or common notion of Soviet Rule as the foreign enemy within Hungarian na-
tional culture, which historically belongs to the European tradition, gave rise to
the positive stereotyping of the West (Vajda 1989; Gal and Kligman 2000, 91-2).
Identification with Western politico-cultural values and socio-cultural norms
was regarded as an expression of political dissidence under socialism.
In the Hungarian Soviet-style authoritarian system, we thus encounter the
coexistence of opposing ideas of who or what the uninvited foreigner is: Soviet-
Russia and/or the West. In order to reconcile the Soviet-style official attitude to
the West with the Hungarian civil notion of Hungary’s socio-cultural affinity,
the ruling party tolerated small-scale distribution of Hungarian translations
of contemporary Western literature and art in an officially controlled semi-
institutionalized and semi-resistant public sphere. This cultural space can be
called the second public sphere and emerges as an effect of the history of the
“bargain” between civil dissidence and official Soviet-style authoritarian politics
(Gal and Kligman 2000, 92). Susan Gal and Gail Kligman argue that dissident
politics aimed at the “reinstatement of a space for independent activities” rather
than fighting for the “destruction of the entire system” (ibid.). I would argue that
the low visibility of Pinter’s works and the early Hungarian critical construc-
tions of Pinter’s authorial identity embody this bargain. The visibility of Pinter’s
dramas was officially tolerable if it remained low and controlled in accordance
with the official ideological tenets and critical language usage. The official re-
strictions on the import and translation of contemporary Western authors, on
the other hand, automatically secured some cultural prestige for Pinter as an
officially repudiated Western author. Any critical or theatrical embrace of his
authorship could have been interpreted as a cultural gesture of political resist-
ance. The equivocal political status of Pinter thus resulted in a contradictory
critical construction of his authorial image, since initial Hungarian reviews were
balanced between the official negative attitude to the West and the resistant civil
position endowing Western culture with positive values.
Political control over the Hungarian public visibility of Pinter can be seen
in the public location of the cultural sites where the critical reviews of his plays
appeared in advance of their Hungarian translations. In the 1960s, Pinter is
introduced in Hungarian theatre as a contemporary Western dramatist at two

cultural sites. Both sites belong to the sphere of high culture and exist in relative
isolation from common or mass culture. One location where Pinter’s authorial
image is fashioned in Hungarian is a semi-public, professional scene, the theatre
studies series of the Institute for Theatre Science. In this series, a researcher at
the institute published a substantial overview of the then current trends in Brit-
ish drama and theatre under the title, Az angol színház újhulláma/The New Wave
of English Theatre (Szántó 1963). This book was issued in 1000 copies and was
designed as an internal product for use by professionals and intellectuals. Szántó
also contributes decisively to the Hungarian crafting of Pinter’s authorial image
as the translator of the first edition of Martin Esslin’s The Theatre of the Absurd,
whose last chapter, “Parallels and Proselytes” contains Esslin’s first critical study
of Pinter’s early oeuvre. The Hungarian translation (Esslin 1967) is an edited text
and was published in 1100 copies by the Institute of Theatre Science in coopera-
tion with the Folk Education Propaganda Office. Like Szántó’s study, it did not
have market distribution and received hardly any publicity when it was released.
The title page defines the Hungarian translation as a volume in the series of the
Small Library of the Association for Hungarian Theatre Art. In other words,
Esslin’s popular and globally distributed English book entered Hungarian culture
as a book for a select group of professionals. Significantly, the Hungarian transla-
tion of Esslin’s chapter on Pinter contains less than half of Esslin’s original text;
that is, the Hungarian translation presents a truncated and censored version of
Esslin’s argument. As a consequence, it highly manipulates the authorial image
Esslin proposes in his English text. In the next section, I examine the Hungarian
translation of Esslin’s chapter on Pinter in The Theatre of the Absurd.
The other Hungarian (high) cultural site where Pinter’s work and image be-
came visible under socialism was Nagyvilág: Világirodalmi folyóirat/Big World:
The Journal of World Literature. The purpose of this journal is to review and
report on contemporary foreign literature, theatre and art, and present transla-
tions of or from works by foreign authors. As the subtitle of the journal suggests,
Hungarian socialist literary politics followed the general logic of the authoritarian
politics of translation in separating foreign literature from national literature
concerning the public forums where they can be published. The institutional
separation secured the public reception of foreign literature in terms of its dif-
ference, its foreign status within Hungarian literary culture. This institutional
and, at the same time, physical separation of foreign literature from Hungarian
native literature also policed the degree of integration of foreign aesthetic values
into Hungarian national culture, as well as the degree of naturalization of foreign
cultural norms for public expression within the Hungarian public sphere. As a
consequence of this separation, direct interaction between established Hungar-

ian norms of critical interpretation and Western ones was also controlled, as
well as the possibility of contesting the established norms. Furthermore, Pinter
was introduced in Hungarian at this specific literary scene by just two drama
critics, both specialists in Anglo-American drama and theatre (Mihályi 1962;
1965; Kéry 1965). Therefore, Pinter’s Hungarian authorial image takes shape as
an effect of a few reviews and critical comments – in the form of “reports from
the West” – by a handful of drama critics enjoying the privilege of having ac-
cess to Western discourses of contemporary drama and theatre. The politically
controlled Hungarian translation of Pinter’s work resulted in the creation of a
monolithic authorial image for Pinter, which was shaped by the officially toler-
ated interpretive practices.
Un/Controlling Critical Language

In his introduction to Absurd Drama, Esslin remarks in passing that “[b]ehind
the Iron Curtain, where socialist realism is the creed in the theatre, there would
appear no room for an avant-garde trend of this type” (1965, n.p.). It would only
appear because, as Esslin argues, in Poland where there had been “relative ar-
tistic freedom” since 1956, a few dramatists had produced some “astonishingly
successful” absurdist plays (1965, n.p.). In this account of the exceptionality of
Polish drama in the context of the theatre culture of the Eastern Bloc, Esslin
reproduces the ideology of the Cold War political divide in cultural terms by
featuring socialist realism as the opposite of absurd drama. Esslin is right to the
extent that socialist realism was the officially propagated genre in the Eastern
Bloc. The conception of the relationship between the theatre of the absurd and
socialist realism as being at opposite poles of post-war theatrical trends, how-
ever, resonates with the Eastern European reception of the theatre of the absurd
rather than with the post-war British critical construction of the relationship
between the theatre of the absurd and the realist theatre tradition. For instance,
in her Marxist-Leninist interpretation of Pinter’s authorial identity alongside the
official political line, Szántó configures the absurd as a well-pronounced nega-
tive aesthetic ideology that is the opposite of socialist realism. As Szántó argues,
contemporary dramatists can choose between two representational modes: they
write either in the idiom of socialist realism or in that of the absurd (1963, 118).
However, the negative reception of absurd drama was a matter of politically
motivated interpretation, which is deeply rooted in Cold War politics and Soviet-
style authoritarianism, including the official negative stereotyping of the West,
rather than an issue of aesthetic form or artistic method. As Jan Culík outlines,
“West-European absurd drama was regarded by East-European officialdom as

the epitome of West-European bourgeois capitalist decadence” (2000, n.p.). By
taking Kenneth Tynan’s attack on “Ionesco as the apostle of anti-realism” to be
a universal truth about the theatre of the absurd, “Western absurd plays were
regarded as nihilistic and anti-realistic” in the Eastern Bloc (Culík 2000, n.p.).
In contextualizing Pinter’s authorship, Szántó reiterates this Soviet-style negative
and clichéd image of the absurd in the context of Hungarian Marxist-Leninist
theatre science. In her critical account of the post-war British theatrical scene,
Szántó defines the absurd as a symptom of the “nihilistic and cynical worldview”
characterizing “some parts of Western thought,” and as the “product of the de-
composition of the bourgeois order” (1963, 136). As this example attests, Soviet-
style drama criticism or, to put it differently, official Marxist-Leninist critical
idiom, repudiated the aesthetics of anti-realism associated with the theatre of the
absurd in the name of safeguarding socialist morality against Western bourgeois
immorality. Thus, the seemingly objective issue of realism as a mode of artistic
representation addresses the vexed relationship between politics and interpreta-
tion. As Stephen Lacey points out in reference to the emergence of the British
New Wave, the issue of realism connects theatre to social and political debates
rather than to aesthetic ones (1995, 4). In the context of the Soviet-style authori-
tarian public sphere, the issue of realism and its critical interpretation was further
complicated by political control over public language usage. As Schöpflin notes:
there is something of a problem for anyone attempting to escape the all-enveloping,

stultifying official language of Marxism-Leninism, which has been voided of meaning
and is employed primarily as an instrument of censorship and as a self-sustaining ritual.
Occasionally, it is true, ‘real language’ – the language actually used in private discourse –
breaks through. (1989, 25)
It is noteworthy that the Hungarian “Pinter-construct” was shaped neither by

Pinter’s plays in their cultural existence and topicality as theatre, film and media
productions, or printed dramas, nor by Pinter as a living author actively cultivat-
ing his authorial identity through his public and media appearances. Instead,
Pinter’s authorial image came into being in the Hungarian cultural context in the
absence of the public availability of Pinter’s plays and his public pronouncements
concerning his theory of authorship. The Hungarian authorial image takes shape
through quoting and rephrasing in Hungarian a very limited selection of critical
voices from the English theatrical and cultural debates, without identifying the
critics’ ideological location in the political context of post-war Britain. The Hun-
garian critical interpretations build up Pinter’s authorial image mainly by cit-
ing explicitly, or often implicitly, Esslin’s The Theatre of the Absurd (1962), John
Russell Taylor’s Anger and After (1962), and Kenneth Tynan’s polemics (1962)
and, to a lesser extent, by rephrasing some press reviews and publicly circulated
opinions about Pinter without acknowledging the cited sources. For instance,
in the reviews introducing Pinter in Nagyvilág/Big World, the reviewers do not
identify the English critics on whom their Hungarian presentations of Pinter’s
authorship draw, even though Esslin and Taylor undoubtedly serve as their un-
named “informants” (Mihályi 1962; 1965; Kéry 1965). As a result, in the Hun-
garian Cold War cultural context, Pinter’s name functions as a self-referential
signifier representing an ideologically uni-formalized mythic Western theatrical
movement: the theatre of the absurd.
Interestingly, it was precisely the selective re/presentation of post-war British
debates over the socio-cultural values of the social realist and the absurd theatre
aesthetics which legitimized the initial reviews of Pinter’s authorial image in the
Soviet-style Hungarian public sphere in the 1960s. The English debates about
the emerging new trends in British drama and theatre culture enabled the Hun-
garian critics to fashion Pinter’s authorial image by linking the officially repudi-
ated concept of the absurd to the officially promoted concept of realism when
introducing Pinter as the English representative of absurd drama in Hungarian.
On the one hand, Pinter was defined as “one of the ‘purest,’ the most radical rep-
resentative of the theatre of the absurd” (Kéry 1965, 1426). On the other hand,
the Hungarian critics indirectly justified their interest in Pinter by accentuating
the realist character of Pinter’s dramatic representation of absurd situations. As
a consequence, early Hungarian critical comments feature Pinter as a border-
line case, the realist dramatist of the absurd tradition. Thus, the Hungarian in-
terpretations of the cultural significance of Pinter’s authorship were controlled
by the aesthetic norms and socio-cultural values of the official Marxist-Leninist
worldview. Accordingly, the early reviews defined Pinter’s early absurd plays as
technically naturalist, bearing the promise of the development of Pinter’s artistic
method from this limited form of realism into a more advanced one. Curiously
enough, it is Esslin himself, who is labelled by Szántó as the “best informed and
most passionate ideologue of the absurd,” who promotes Pinter as the true realist
dramatist in the Hungarian linguistic context (1963, 119). Cunningly enough,
Esslin’s definition emerges from Szántó’s heavily edited and truncated Hungarian
translation of The Theatre of the Absurd (1967). The Hungarian linkage between
the absurd and realism opens perspective on the peculiar Cold War interaction
between the British public cultural debates and its Hungarian reinterpretations
alongside the Marxist-Leninist worldview.
The Hungarian making of Pinter’s authorial image was heavily shaped by im-
porting Esslin’s embrace of Pinter as the English representative of the theatre
of the absurd together with the public debate over the post-war renewal of the
Western theatrical tradition of realism with the emergence of a new genera-
tion of English playwrights. As Lacey argues, “Godot/Beckett (and what critics
were learning to call the Absurd generally) provided one possible interpretative
framework” for deliberating or rather scorning Pinter’s early plays (1995, 140).
On the other hand, the “surface similarities between Pinter’s plays and the char-
acteristics of New Wave realism;” the lower-class settings and “the language of
the plays, which is recognizably of a lower-class idiom” allow for “social realism”
as an alternative interpretive framework for valuing Pinter’s early plays (141).
As in the plays of the “realist tradition,” the setting of Pinter’s dramatic fictions
is often “the domestic, the everyday,” which is “realized theatrically in concrete,
naturalistic detail” (144). However, as Lacey rightly points out, Pinter’s professed
aesthetic theory allows us to see Pinter’s theatrical language and re/presentational
mode as a radical challenge to the “epistemological basis” of the realist theatri-
cal tradition (142). On the whole, Pinter’s professed aesthetic theory warns us
against a naturalistic (mimetic) interpretation or referential reading of his plays
(141-3). Nonetheless, the surface similarities between Pinter’s re/presentational
mode and the naturalist tradition of theatrical practice, and the renewed British
realist drama of the post-war period, provided a possible and, at the same time,
contradictory interpretive framework for the Hungarian Marxist-Leninist recep-
tion of the Western critical constructions of Pinter’s authorial identity.
In the context of post-war British drama and theatre, the critics associated
with the New Left undoubtedly played a key-role in redefining realism as well as
exploring Pinter’s plays in relation to the Western tradition of realism and/or nat-
uralism (Lacey 1995, 32-9; Stokes 2001, 30-3). The Marxist orientation of New
Left critics apparently establishes an ideological interconnection, and a possible
exchange, between the British critical concerns with Pinter’s relation to the realist
tradition and the Hungarian interpretation of Pinter in terms of realism. Howev-
er, the differences between the political contexts and the status of Marxism with-
in the British (Western) and the Hungarian (Eastern European) socio-cultural
contexts take the realist cultivation of Pinter’s authorial image in different direc-
tions concerning their political meanings and critical edges. In the first place,
the officially sanctioned Marxist-Leninist ideological position of the Eastern
Bloc differs strikingly from the Western Marxist critical position concerning
their tenets and critical purposes. The former embodied the politico-cultural
dogma of the Soviet-style Establishment and, as an interpretive framework, did
not allow critiquing the social realities of state-socialism; the established power
structures, public and institutional relations, or political and social exclusions
and injustice. Instead, the Leninist-Marxist dogmatic interpretation branded the
West as the negative counterpart of the morally and culturally superior Eastern
Bloc. As Szántó argues, the absurd sentiment expresses the general anxiety felt
about “the triumphant strengthening of the socialist world order and its growing
attractiveness for the people of the capitalist countries” and embodies the “death
mood of the capitalist world” (1963, 121-2). The Western Marxist philosophical
stance, however, is a dissident position aiming at critiquing the socio-cultural
values of the Establishment and calling for political and institutional change to-
wards a more egalitarian and inclusive socio-cultural system.
The differences between the politics of Western Marxist and the Soviet-style
Marxist interpretations can best be grasped in the critical discussions of Pint-
er’s relation to naturalism as a specific mode of realism. As Lacey argues, in the
British cultural context, naturalism “was connected to questions of method and
used to describe the general mimetic tradition as a whole, the ambition towards
verisimilitude that constituted part of the historical development of realism”
(1995, 99). As he goes on, “[i]n the post-war context, naturalism was, in one
sense, simply a shorthand for the practices of the pre-1956 theatre” (100). Conse-
quently, in the post-1956 British theatre scene, the anti-naturalist position meant
“to reject the creaky plots, artificially manipulated climaxes, the box-sets and
lack of ‘theatricality’ that scarred the old theatre in the eyes of the new” (100).
Raymond Williams’ Marxist reading of The Birthday Party, in which he proposes
to see this particular play as a “naturalist comedy” participates in the critical ex-
plication of Pinter’s analytical attitude to the realist theatre tradition (1973, 372).
According to Williams, Pinter reinterprets the naturalist tradition because in his
“dangerous comedy of ordinariness” Pinter stages
at once the attachment to ordinary life – the conviction of normality, of the everyday –
and a covert valuation, beyond the anxious imitation – of a loss of significance, a loss of
reality: a naturalism at once confirmed and emptied of content, given a different con-
tent. (374)
Reflecting on Pinter’s authorial attitude to the realist theatre tradition, Lacey

also argues:
[Pinter] challenges both the degree to which reality is indeed capable of being defined
and understood with the precision that realists claim, and the belief that the function of
theatre is to provide representations – and experiences – that are themselves fixed and
‘knowable’ and that collude with the myth that the world is likewise. (1995, 142)
Lacey’s account of post-war conceptualizations of the relationship between

realism and naturalism suggests that the British public debate over dramatic
method was partially shaped through an integration of the Eastern Europe-
an engagement with making a distinction between naturalism and realism as
epistemological models (Stanislavski and George Lukács) into arguments over

the new directions in post-war contemporary British drama and theatre (101-3).
According to Lacey,
George Lukacs mounted a sustained attack on naturalism as part of a larger defence of

realism on the grounds that the former simply represented “the phenomenal forms”
of reality, its surface appearances. Naturalism was concerned with the here and now,
and with causality that was immediate and self-evident. Realism, however, was able to
see beneath “whatever manifested itself immediately and on the surface” to the laws that
govern the inner workings of history. (Lukács quoted in Lacey 1995, 102)
In the context of the Soviet-style Hungarian public sphere, Lukács’s epis-

temological distinction between realism and naturalism may function as an
inarticulate dissident view within the Marxist-Leninist propagation of socialist
realism. As Barbara J. Falk points out, Lukács’s philosophy was officially rejected
partly because his notion of class was “much more in keeping with Hegel and the
writings of the ‘young’ Marx than with the Bolshevism of Lenin and the Russian
revolutionaries” (2003, 257-8). Generally, the intellectual embrace of Lukács’s
aesthetics and theory of culture was a sign of political dissidence in the 1960s
(Falk 2003, 257). However, the intelligibility of the public expression of dissident
interpretation was jeopardized by the fear of potential retribution for openly
expressing a dissident view. As Schöpflin observes, even the language of semi-
public dissident culture – for instance samizdat literature – was at times so per-
meated with the “fetters of the Marxist-Leninist metalanguage” that its meaning
was enigmatic and almost unintelligible (1989, 25).
Uncannily, Lukács’s definition of naturalism cited by Lacey appears as a uni-
versally applicable axiomatic theory whose source requires no acknowledge-
ment in Mihályi’s (1962) introductory review of Pinter in the journal of world
literature. In Mihályi’s conception, Pinter belongs to the absurd tradition to the
extent that he expresses “the absurdity of the world” (1097). However, from
the perspective of method, Mihályi considers Pinter to be a traditional naturalist
dramatist. Thus, he presents Pinter as a young English dramatist who belongs
to the absurdist tradition and yet whose dramas define him as a realist author
(1966-67). By echoing Lukács’s thesis, Mihályi claims that “Pinterian realism is
in fact the most perfect naturalism, which remains at the level of the superficial
phenomena of life, and refuses the revelation of the deeper relationships behind
the phenomena” (1097). As Mihályi argues, Pinter’s authorial vision is “more re-
alist and life-like” than Beckett’s, which can be taken as a positive element in
Pinter’s absurdist worldview (1099). Nonetheless, Pinter’s authorial weakness is
that his “realist endeavour” is still at the stage of naturalism; it “is stuck in the
surface form of life” (1099). Accordingly, Mihályi concludes that Pinter’s artistic
development from the Kafka-like absurdist aesthetic towards naturalism is clear
evidence of “how the constraints of Pinter’s ideological, aesthetic and drama-
turgical principles block the artistic self-expression of this undoubtedly talented
writer” (1099). This first review of Pinter’s work and image, echoing Lukács’ con-
cept of naturalism, might be regarded as a somewhat radical public act in 1962,
which is a transitional year from the post-1956 political terror to the post-1963
period of Kádár’s “soft dictatorship.” Nevertheless, the naturalist modelling of
Pinter’s authorial identity enables the legitimization of the critical interpretation
of Pinter as a Western absurdist and contemporary British author in the Hun-
garian Soviet-style public sphere. At the same time, the naturalist interpretation
secures the critic’s “political correctness,” since the concept of naturalism features
the Western author as less developed than the socialist realist ideal of author-
ship. Whereas Williams’ reading promotes Pinter’s image in terms of reform and
progress, Mihályi apparently publicizes Pinter in the Hungarian cultural context
in terms of conventionality and aesthetic inferiority by providing a hierarchical
definition of the relationship between naturalism and true realism in accordance
with the developmental logic of Marxist-Leninist historical materialism. How-
ever, the very act of making Pinter’s authorship known in the context of Hungar-
ian Cold War political rhetoric can be taken as a gesture of political resistance
against the Soviet-style negative notion of Western culture(s).
The second report on Pinter’s authorship in Nagyvilág/Big World was László
Kéry’s review of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1965 premier production of
Pinter’s The Homecoming (1965). It is worth noting that the Hungarian critics’
report on his London theatre experience indirectly points at the critic’s privi-
leged socio-cultural position, since being present at a London theatre premier
was hardly a common experience for Hungarians under socialism. In his review
of the London production, Kéry identifies The Homecoming as Pinter’s authorial
movement from the absurd towards realist theatre. Accordingly, in his account
of the London theatre premier of The Homecoming, Pinter’s play is transformed
into a dramatic representation that is an exemplary realization of the tenets of
social(ist) realist drama.
The Marxist-Leninist dimension of Kéry’s “realist” interpretation becomes
palpable if we read his review and Stuart Hall’s review of the same theatre produc-
tion side by side, focusing on the critics’ assumptions about the life-like character
of The Homecoming. According to Hall, Pinter provides a realist representation
in The Homecoming to the extent that in this play Pinter “expose[s] the machin-
ery of fantasy,” the ways in which family, and by extension communal relations
are established and maintained through telling stories about the self and others
(1965, 34). As Hall argues, “[i]n this limited aim [Pinter] is brilliantly successful
– his grip on the reality behind the rituals finding, in his use of language, a near-
perfect stylised expression” (34). John Stokes argues that “Hall’s term, ‘fantasy’,
refers not to the delusory dreams of the playwright but to the closely observed
behaviour of his characters” (2001, 32). Therefore, Hall defines the analytical
potential of Pinter’s representational mode as compellingly realistic.
In Kéry’s conception, The Homecoming remains a specifically Pinterian ab-
surdist play in the sense that “psychological motivation is still missing”, but the
new realist element Pinter introduces in this play is that this drama contains
some “social concreteness,” since The Homecoming allows us to perceive “the
real state of contemporary bourgeois society behind the characters and attitudes”
(1965, 1426). Therefore, the unusualness of The Homecoming resides in the fact
that “social motivation penetrates” into this absurd drama (1426). By echoing
Marxist-Leninist dogma, Kéry claims that in The Homecoming Pinter offers an
accurate image of the “dissolution of the petit bourgeois family” in which “there
remains nothing from the family ties except mechanical relationships, and where
all the valuable human content is displaced by the violent acts of profit, terrori-
zation and exploitation” (1426). Kéry concludes that Pinter reveals “one of the
basic Laws of the contemporary bourgeois world” in The Homecoming (1427).
Thus, in Kéry’s interpretation, The Homecoming is transformed into a social(ist)
realist drama in which Pinter tries to go beyond the “limits of absurd drama” by
providing a true re-presentation of the inhuman and immoral world of Western
capitalist societies. This “politically correct” reading in fact justifies Kéry’s act of
reviewing the London production of The Homecoming through crafting Pinter’s
authorial image in accordance with the official Marxist-Leninist aesthetic ideol-
ogy blended with the Soviet-style, Cold War political branding of Western soci-
ety as the negative counterpart of the socialist world.
In the Hungarian linguistic context, Pinter develops from an “inferior real-
ist” dramatist into the realist author par excellence through the edited Hungar-
ian translation of the first edition of Esslin’s The Theatre of the Absurd (1967).
The somewhat unexpected transformation of Esslin’s notion of Pinter’s authorial
identity happens through presenting only one third of Esslin’s chapter on Pinter
in Hungarian. The Hungarian translation opens by omitting Esslin’s half-page
summary of Pinter’s biography and identifying only the year in which Pinter
started to write plays. Esslin gives this specific biographical detail as the last part
of a longer sentence in the middle of the second paragraph of his chapter on
Pinter. The Hungarian translation also omits Esslin’s summaries of the plots, the
settings and the characters of Pinter’s plays as well as Esslin’s quotations from
the plays discussed. These omissions appear unreasonable in the light of the fact
that neither Pinter’s biography, nor Pinter’s plays were available in Hungarian
at the time of publishing the Hungarian translation of Esslin’s seminal book.
Given that the Hungarian translation was published under the aegis of the Folk
Education and Propaganda Office, it can be rightly assumed that the omissions
are the results of a deliberate choice and function as a form of censorship5. As
a consequence, the Hungarian translation transforms Esslin’s representation-
centric interpretation of Pinter’s plays into a description of Pinter’s theory of the
realist authorial method. As Pinter explains in Hungarian, “And I think what I
try to do in my dramas is to capture the recognizable reality of the absurdity of
our actions, behaviour and speech” (Esslin 1967, 74)6.
The style of Esslin’s critical language changes into a rather militant rhetoric
in Hungarian. From the Hungarian critical narrative unfolds an ideologically-
driven artistic fight for the title of the “true realist author.” The Hungarian transla-
tion includes mainly those parts of the original text in which Esslin puts forward
his criticism of post-war British social drama and theatre in order to accentuate
the aesthetic advantages of Pinter’s authorial attitude towards the social and the
political. This point is addressed within Esslin’s general conception of Pinter’s
theatrical representation as a realization of ambiguous and uncertain meanings;
the blending of the elements of tragedy and comedy, the stylization of everyday
situations and ordinary language usage and the difficulties of verifying the re-
alness and/or unrealness of Pinter’s dramatic world. In the edited Hungarian
translation, however, Esslin promotes Pinter as a realist dramatist whose “in-
triguing paradox” is that “he considers himself a more uncompromising, ruthless
realist than the champions of ‘social realism’ could ever be” (Esslin 1980, 263).
Accordingly, Pinter is in “search for a higher degree of realism in the theatre” in
Hungarian (Esslin 1980, 242).
5 Paradoxically, the strategies of translation and edition may suggest a dissident transla-
tion aiming at producing a text which passes censorship and, at the same time, puts for-
ward a parody of political censorship for those who can “read between the lines”. The
edited Hungarian translation accentuates 1957 as the year which witnesses the begin-
ning of the dramatist’s career, whose dramas are realist representations of the absurdity
of human existence in the post-1956 era. The selected translation of Esslin’s argument
may open up the possibility for a double talk which allows for reading metaphorically
into Pinter’s history and theory of authorship the dramatization of the absurdity of
Hungarian social reality under the post-1956 political terror.
6 “And I think what I try to do in my plays is to get to this recognizable reality of the
absurdity of what we do and how we behave and how we speak” (Pinter quoted in
Esslin 1980, 242).
Strangely enough, instead of summarizing the merits of Pinter’s achievements

in English drama and theatre – as Esslin does in The Theatre of the Absurd –
in Hungarian, Esslin concludes his section on Pinter with a critical remark on
the “social realist” (Esslin 1967, 78). The concluding sentence of the Hungarian
translation is originally the first part of a longer line of argument followed by
the contrasting transitional phase, “on the other hand,” in the next paragraph of
Esslin’s English text (Esslin 1980, 263). As a consequence, the Hungarian chapter
on Pinter closes with a conclusive judgement on the social realist’s failure to
make a fundamental change: “After the social realist has established the need
for his reform, the basic problems of existence remain – loneliness, the impen-
etrable mystery of the universe, death” (Esslin 1980, 263). As a result, in Esslin’s
Hungarian construction Pinter appears as a realist dramatist who disapproves
of the “political, social, realist drama, which cannot make a claim to the title of
realism” (Esslin 1967, 78)7. Ironically, in the edited Hungarian translation of
The Theatre of the Absurd, Esslin promotes Pinter as a realist dramatist of the
mimetic tradition.
Whereas the Hungarian translation gives the issue of the social(ist) realist
dramatist as Esslin’s main concern in relation to Pinter, it identifies the “problem
of control”, which is “closely linked to the writer’s use of language” as the central
issue Pinter stages in and by his absurd dramas (Esslin 1967, 76). This crafting
of Pinter’s authorial image takes place through a “mistranslation” of Pinter’s oft-
quoted authorial comment on the difficulty of verification and making a dis-
tinction between “what is true and what is false” in a theatrical representation
(Pinter quoted in Esslin 1980, 243). The passage in question has become Pinter’s
authorial trademark since the 1960s. In his Nobel Lecture, Pinter defined this
passage as the gist of his notion of artistic representation in opposition to his
ideal of political representation, which, according to Pinter, should be factual.
As Pinter argues,
I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of
reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I
must ask: What is true? What is false?. (Pinter 2005)
7 In Esslin’s formulation, “the political, social-realist play loses its claim to realism”
(1980, 263). Whereas it is clear that Esslin discusses Pinter in relation to the con-
ceptualization of post-war British socialist drama, in the Hungarian translation, his
context-specific argument becomes obscure and, in the absence of its point of refer-
ence even unintelligible. In the Hungarian linguistic context, Esslin’s appeal to real-
ism reinterprets his point from the perspective of the Marxist-Leninist concept of
realist drama.
In Hungarian, Pinter argues in Esslin’s quotation that

the desire for control is understandable but cannot always be satisfied. There are no
clear distinctions between the real and the unreal, the truthful and the mendacious. A
thing is not necessarily truthful or mendacious; it can be both truthful and mendacious.
I think that the view according to which the happenings of the past and the present can
be controlled without much difficulty is not appropriate. (Esslin 1967, 75)
I would argue that by omitting Esslin’s direct and indirect representations of

Pinter’s plays and presenting the “problem of control” as the keystone of Pinter’s
authorial concerns, the Hungarian translation opens up Esslin’s critical interpre-
tation of Pinter’s notions of theatrical representation and artistic communication
for reading it as a political allegory contesting political control over public nar-
ratives of history and truth in the context of the Hungarian authoritarian public
sphere. On the one hand, the omission of Esslin’s context-specific interpreta-
tions of Pinter’s dramatic representations eliminates the particularities of Pinter’s
treatment of language in relation to the British social and theatrical uses of eve-
ryday idioms of “standard English”. On the other hand, the Hungarian twisting
of Esslin’s reasoning in The Theatre of the Absurd represents Pinter as a realist
author who stages the absurdity of everyday communication and the impossibil-
ity of controlling the representations of historical reality as a universal human
issue readily applicable to the Hungarian authoritarian public sphere.
In English, at this point, Esslin argues that “[t]he problem of verification in
Pinter’s theatre is closely linked with his use of language. Pinter’s clinically accu-
rate ear for the absurdity of ordinary speech enables him to transcribe everyday
conversation in all its repetitiveness, incoherence, and lack of logic or grammar”
(Esslin 1980, 243-4). The Hungarian translation, however, features Pinter’s au-
thorial treatment of the ambiguities of everyday language usage not in connec-
tion with the question of verifying the truth but with the issue of controlling
and revealing the truth about everyday language usage: “The problem of con-
trol in Pinter’s dramas is closely linked with the writer’s language use. Pinter’s
clinically accurate ear for the absurdity of ordinary speech enables him to record
everyday conversations with all their repetitiveness, incoherence, illogicality and
inaccuracy” (Esslin 1967, 76)8. In the Hungarian linguistic context, the realist
construction of Pinter’s authorial image may reshape Pinter’s absurd plays as
8 “Az ellenőrzés problémája Pinter drámáiban szorosan kapcsolódik az író nyelvhasz

nálatához. Pinternek klinikai pontosságú hallása van a köznapi beszéd abszurditásához
és így rögzíteni tudja a mindennapi beszélgetéseket a maguk minden ismétlődésével,
összefüggéstelenségével, logikátlanságával és pontatlanságával” (Esslin 1967, 76).
potential allegories indirectly parodying the officially sanctioned Marxist-Leninist

language of public expression. Hence, the edited translation of Esslin’s interpre-
tation of Pinter’s authorship implicitly outlines a possible dissident position for
Pinter in the Hungarian socio-cultural context, as if Pinter’s realist dramatization
of the absurdity of everyday communication aimed at “emancipating language
from the fetters of the Marxist-Leninist metalanguage” (Schöpflin 1989, 25). In-
terestingly, the Hungarian Cold War allegorical reshaping of Esslin’s notion of
Pinter’s authorial identity may foreshadow Pinter’s critical concern with politics
in his post-Cold War political phase.
Contradictorily, the authorial image that unfolds from Szántó’s censored
translation of Esslin’s argument is completely different from the one Szántó of-
fers in her Marxist-Leninist, “politically correct” interpretation emphasising the
equivocality and multiplicity of the meanings of Pinter’s absurd dramas in nega-
tive terms by using Esslin’s original text as the main reference for her Hungarian
overview of Pinter (Szántó 1963, 125). The selective translation of Esslin’s inter-
pretation of Pinter’s authorial identity in fact provides a justification for Hungar-
ian critical interest in Pinter in spite of Pinter’s officially promoted suspicious
foreignness. In presenting only one side of Esslin’s argument in Hungarian – his
critical concerns about the aesthetic limits of post-war British social realism or
working-class realism and his outline of Pinter’s authorial attitude to politics and
social reality – the Hungarian translation legitimizes Pinter’s plays in advance of
their Hungarian translation in a politically equivocal, double manner within the
Soviet-style authoritarian interpretative paradigm. On the one hand, the Hun-
garian re/presentation of Esslin’s argument makes Pinter’s plays fit the officially
propagated Marxist-Leninist aesthetic theory, which in the name of socialist re-
alism expects from a work to contain a universal human message. On the other
hand, the promotion of Pinter as a “socialist” realist author of Western absurd
drama opens up the possibility of interpreting Pinter’s plays as political allego-
ries about the absurdity of life in the Eastern Bloc alongside the socialist idea of
the universal human value. The analytical potential of Pinter’s early absurdist
plays in the context of an authoritarian system is highlighted by Charles Evans
in remarking on Pinter’s Russian reception in the 1980s that “Russians found in
Pinter’s work in particular a strong echo of their own situation” (2001, 155).
Conclusion
The politically shaped abstract construction of Pinter’s authorial image and
equivocal cultural significance by a select group of theatre critics has strongly af-
fected Hungarian theatrical interpretations and theatre history of Pinter’s plays.
Here the chronological relation – the temporal difference – between the critical
construction of Pinter’s authorial identity and the ‘discovery’ of Pinter’s plays by
theatre groups and directors is significant. Importantly, English theatre produc-
tions have been decisively shaped by Pinter’s authorial intention, his actual co-
operation with directors and producers, and his authorial consent to the style of
the theatre performances. Unlike in the West, where the authorial image-making
process temporally coincides with and is inseparable from the public visibility and
history of the theatrical and media productions of Pinter’s plays, in Hungary, Pint-
er’s plays entered Hungarian theatre culture a decade after the Hungarian censored
translation of Esslin’s The Theatre of the Absurd, from the very end of the 1970s.
Therefore, when Pinter’s work was ‘discovered’ for theatre productions, there had
already been a specifically Hungarian, ready-made authorial image, which deci-
sively oriented the theatrical interpretations of Pinter’s plays. As is suggested by
a compilation of the translations, critical works and reviews available in Hun-
garian at the back of the prompt copy of the 1980 Hungarian theatre premier of
The Birthday Party, Hungarian directors primarily, and almost exclusively, relied
on Hungarian translations and critical interpretations of Pinter’s works (Pinter
1980, 113-48). Accordingly, Hungarian directors interpreted Pinter’s plays within
the Hungarian authoritarian and officially controlled politico-cultural context
and national theatre tradition, without having access to or considering relevant
the post-war British theatrical practices of staging and acting within which the
Anglo-American theatrical interpretations of Pinter’s plays has taken place.
Pinter’s Hungarian public image has been shaped by reconciling the Hungar-
ian civil interest in the West as the site of progressive (and forbidden) culture
with the official Soviet-style repudiation of the West as the bedrock of inhuman-
ity and social immorality. In the Hungarian crafting of Pinter’s authorial image
the tension between the civil promotion of Western culture(s) and official politi-
cal control over the import of Western culture(s) was particularized by re/pre-
senting Pinter as a realist author of contemporary Western absurd drama. The
Hungarian critical combination of the absurd and realism resulted in endowing
Pinter’s authorial image with equivocal cultural value and suspicious political
meaning in the Marxist-Leninist context of the Hungarian authoritarian public
sphere. The contradictory critical construction of Pinter’s authorial image had
arguably contributed to the Hungarian history of theatre productions of Pinter
plays as a realization of the Hungarian directors’ struggle with the political au-
thorities to control the public visibility of Pinter’s work in the context of theatre
under socialism. There remain a number of questions for further research con-
cerning the impact of the socialist fashioning of Pinter’s authorial image on the
Hungarian post-Cold War perception of his authorial identity and difference.
References
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rodalmi folyóirat 7: 639-49. Also available online at http://www.nagyvilag-
folyoirat.hu/2006-7-ok.pdf
Bogácsi, E. 1991. Rivaldazárlat. Budapest: Dovin.
Culík, J. 2000. The Theatre of the Absurd: The West and the East. http://www.
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Evans, C. 2001. Pinter in Russia. The Cambridge Companion to Harold Pinter ed.
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Anna Suwalska-Kołecka
Chapter Nine
Rediscovering Pinter – a few comments on the
most recent Polish productions of Pinter’s plays
Introduction
It is a truth universally acknowledged that in Poland Harold Pinter is a name
of the past. Although theatre practitioners, directors, and actors openly express
admiration for his oeuvre and consider the playwright as a modern classic, they
have rarely turned to his plays in recent years. Therefore the main aim of this
chapter is to consider factors that operate to affect this situation and to examine
the condition of Pinter’s plays in Polish theatres. First, I will attempt to roughly
outline the reception of Pinter’s works from a historical perspective to provide
the background to the current situation. Secondly, I will give a critical account
of a number of noteworthy Pinter productions that ran in Poland between 2005
and 2011. I intend to point out a set of characteristics shared by these produc-
tions to examine how they develop a particular understanding, or occasionally
misunderstanding of Pinter’s works. Finally, these observations will allow a con-
clusion whether the process of rediscovery has been complete.
Harold Pinter in Poland – a brief overview

In many Eastern European countries Harold Pinter’s works were neither
published nor staged, Poland, however, was a striking exception. Although cul-
ture was controlled by party ideologues, Stalin’s death in 1953, followed by the
death of Poland’s president Bolesław Bierut, brought the period of most ruthless
repression to an end. In 1956 Dialog, a drama journal was founded, as an indica-
tion of change in cultural policy and a break with the regime of censorship. Since
it published the latest plays by leading Western authors, the journal contributed
substantially to the introduction of world drama to Polish theatres. Apart from
Beckett, whose Waiting for Godot was included in the first issue, the journal pre-
sented plays by Dürrenmatt, Adamov, Ionesco and Pinter, among others. The
Birthday Party was published in Dialog as early as 1960, The Dumb Waiter just
a year later, and The Homecoming in 1965, one year after its London premiere.
All these plays were translated by Adam Tarn, the journal’s editor and himself
a playwright. When in 1968 he fell out of grace with the leading party, lost his
142 Anna Suwalska-Kołecka
post and was made to leave the country, he recommended Bolesław Taborski as
his successor and the great majority of the forthcoming translations of Pinter’s
plays were his.
Pinter’s dramatic output quickly attracted great interest in Poland, and all the
early plays had successful theatrical productions. His popularity reached its peak
in the 1960s and 70s when his plays were directed by the most distinguished
Polish directors. The Dumb Waiter opened at Współczesny Theatre in Warsaw
in 1961, directed by Jerzy Kreczmar, and The Caretaker at Węgierki Theatre in
Białystok, directed by Izabela Cywińska-Adamska in 1965, at Powszechny Thea-
tre in Łódź next year, and at Ateneum Theatre in Warsaw in 1968. The Birthday
Party had its Polish premiere at Polski Theatre in Warsaw in 1966, directed by
Jerzy Kreczmar, and The Homecoming in 1967 at Słowacki Theatre in Kraków by
Jerzy Goliński. It can be said that Pinter was best represented at Ziemia Lubuska
Theatre in Zielona Góra, where Jerzy Hoffman directed in the years 1968-70
four of his plays: The Lover, The Collection, A Slight Ache, and Landscape. All
in all, The Lover is a real record breaker as far as its presence on Polish stages is
concerned, for it has had fourteen productions in mainstream theatres so far, not
to mention alternative or student performances.
Apart from theatre, Pinter’s works were also present in other media, for ex-
ample, in the sixties Polish Radio broadcast A Night Out and The Collection. TV
theatre showed A Night Out in 1968 directed by Józef Gruda, and The Lover first
directed in 1972 by Zygmunt Hűbner and in 1993 by Robert Gliński.
Bolesław Taborski remembers Pinter’s kindness and friendliness towards Pol-
ish artists and the theatres that staged his plays. The most memorable incident
was connected with The Betrayal, first staged at Warsaw’s Powszechny Theatre
in 1979. What Pinter appreciated was the ingenuity of the theatre programme.
It took the form of a diary written by the main character, Emma Downs, who
recorded all the events of the action up to the premiere performance of Betrayal
in London at the National Theatre on 15th November 1978. Pinter complimented
the artists behind this project and asked for a few programmes to be sent to him
(Taborski 2006, 44).
In an interview conducted to celebrate Pinter’s Nobel Prize, Erwin Axer, a re-
nowned theatre director, remembers that, back in the sixties, Pinter represented
for them all that was innovative and fresh in theatre. Theatre lovers at that time
were fascinated by his language, the ambiguity that strayed far from the demands
of realistic representation and especially his attempts to probe the psychic prob-
lems of man (Pawłowski 2005).
Because of the political situation in the country in the 1980s, Pinter’s latest
plays were not published and were mainly staged by student theatres. It seems
Polish productions of Pinter’s plays 143
that after the political transformation interest in his plays was slowly waning.
Although the plays written from 1991-99 were already available in Taborski’s
translation in Dialog, very few directors turned to them and chose – if at all – the
plays from an earlier period. Finally, from 1989 (the fall of Communism) to 2005
when Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, there were fewer than 10
productions of his plays. A notable exception to this slow disappearance of Pint-
er from Polish theatres was the production of Old Times at Narodowy Theatre
(the National Theatre) in 2000, directed by Agnieszka Lipiec-Wróblewska and
running for nearly 200 performances. Roman Pawłowski, an influential theatre
critic, attempted to probe the essence of the problem and asked theatre directors
about the reasons for this neglect. On the whole, they expressed an opinion that
Pinter was no longer considered as an artist who captured the predicament of
contemporary man. Though the opinion is both wrongful and unfair, it seems
to be generally held. For example, Piotr Kruszyński, an artistic director of Sza-
niawski Theatre in Wałbrzych, suspected that theatres were afraid to stage Pinter
because, in the present climate of opinion, his plays are considered too hermetic
and as holding little appeal for contemporary viewers. Though Kruszyński him-
self does not adhere to this prevailing view and holds Pinter in high esteem for
the artistic merit of his works, he has not yet decided to stage Pinter in the thea-
tre he runs, since, he admitted, he had been discouraged by fears of commercial
failure. To add to that, Maciej Nowak, an artistic director of Wybrzeże Theatre
in Gdańsk, claimed that Pinter represented for them the aesthetics of the 1960s
and 70s. Therefore, a new generation of theatre directors searching for new ways
of seeing, feeling, and thinking in the plays two decades younger, labeled the
playwright as totally out of tune with the needs and dilemmas arising in the new
millennium. All in all, every participant in the discussion expressed the wish
that the Nobel Prize would rekindle the general interest in Pinter’s plays. Mikołaj
Grabowski, director of Stary Theatre in Kraków, stressed that Pinter’s comeback
is necessary and in a way unavoidable, for the real value of Pinter’s works lies in
his gift to conjure up the mental spaces of man that are not limited to any histori-
cal time (Pawłowski 2005).
The same tone prevailed in other press articles that informed the public about
the decision of the Swedish Academy, where major Polish theatre critics wrote
that they would wait in anticipation for Pinter to be rediscovered on the Polish
stage. Apart from the positive publicity over the prize, it was believed that inter-
est in Pinter’s plays would undoubtedly be revived, on account of the publica-
tion of a three-volume collection of his most important works that came out in
2006. The value of this publication lay not only in the fact that it was the first
opportunity for the Polish reader to have all the playwright’s plays collected in
book form, but also in the introduction, written by Bolesław Taborski, in which
he discussed thoroughly Pinter’s literary career and provided the background to
the major principles underlying his oeuvre. In addition, each volume contained
a comprehensive list of all the Polish productions of Pinter’s plays, as well as de-
tailed information about selected foreign productions. This publication gives the
Polish reader and theatre lover access to Pinter’s plays that they otherwise lacked.
The New World Order in Kielce 2006

In December 2006, Piotr Szczerski directed Pinter’s four one-act plays at
Żeromski Theatre in Kielce: Victoria Station, One for the Road, Mountain Lan-
guage, and The New World Order under a common title of the last-named play.
What received a lot of critical attention was the director’s resourceful use of thea-
tre space, which mingled the acting and non-acting areas and resulted in the more
active participation of the audience. Before the play started the audience was gath-
ered in front of the gate leading to the theatre courtyard, above which hung the
notice with the title of the play. The first impression it left on the audience must
have been extremely strong, for the notice closely resembled the slogan Arbeit
macht frei (work sets you free) placed over the entrance to the Nazi concentration
camp in Auschwitz. Later the impression of oppression and danger was nothing
but confirmed. The gate closed behind them with an ominous creak, and the au-
dience was crowded into a dingy courtyard. Guards in black uniforms, strikingly
reminiscent of foremen in Nazi camps or a ZOMO police unit, punched the tick-
ets and divided the spectators into three groups: red, white, and black, marking
their strength and domination over their viewers by holding batons in respec-
tive colours. Again the ghosts of the past made their presence felt, for during the
WWII such dingy courtyards were the places where after a round-up common
people, arrested straight from the street, were divided into three groups and taken
to work either on farms, in weapon factories or in concentration camps.
In the Kielce performance, after the division was complete each group was
led by their guard through labyrinthine and poorly-lit corridors to different
parts of the theatre building where they watched one of the plays. Later, again
after a strenuous walk up and down the stairs, they changed places with another
group, until each group had seen all three plays and met in a final spot to watch
the last one together. The director decided to eliminate almost completely the
barrier separating the actors and the spectators, for the audience watched the
play standing around the playing actors, just within their reach. This close prox-
imity, the dimmed light, the grinding sounds, and the presence of the guards
watching the reactions of viewers instilled in the audience feelings of threat and
menace comparable to those acted on stage. This emotional concord was at

times strengthened by the sounds of other performances reaching the viewers in
particular groups because the acting areas were closely situated and the oppres-
siveness of the reception situation seemed to attack them on all sides. The actors,
generally praised for their performance, managed to convey both the pain of the
victims and the pleasure it gives the oppressors.
The involvement of the audience resulted in the frequently emotional and
personal tone of the reviewers, moved by the plays they had attended. For ex-
ample, in Gazeta Wyborcza Stanisław Żak (2006) quotes dialogue from the plays
and juxtaposes it with exchanges he remembers with the guards when he was
arrested and imprisoned for underground activity against the communist regime
in 1982. The playwright’s craft then becomes clearly visible because the lines
from Pinter sound almost exactly like the real, brief, and harsh exchanges the
prisoner remembers from his sinister past.
Generally, this production met with a broadly favorable response from both
theatre goers and reviewers. Additionally, it should be emphasized that its im-
mense value lies in the fact that it afforded a rare opportunity to attend plays
Pinter wrote in a later part of his career, for the overwhelming majority of his
latest productions is limited to a few plays from its early stage. This produc-
tion, however, suffers from a few drawbacks that are paradoxically intimately
connected with the element that was most widely praised: the management of
space. Obviously, the conscious and deliberate manipulation of the theatre space
resulted in a more active reception of the theatre audience, who were trans-
formed from passive observers to witnesses or even participants in the scenes
of violence. In feeling the bodies of other viewers pressing on them, crowded
into a smelly courtyard, led through darkened corridors and hearing sickening
sounds, their perception is enhanced to include other senses, and the terror of
the situation seeps through to them in a very effective way. However, certain ele-
ments of the performance, like the costumes of the guards or the notice above
the gate, endow the space with a certain historical past, that of a Nazi occupation
or communist regime. Therefore the attention of the audience is directed at the
past rather than at the present, and it is in historical events and in totalitarian
systems that they are made to look for the manifestation of abuse and evil. Al-
though Pinter himself admitted that, in comparison with his earlier plays that
presented metaphors for power and powerlessness, his later pieces convey literal
images of power and its abuse (Hern 1984, 8-9, 16-17), the specific historical
context of this performance makes it difficult for the audience to consider criti-
cally the reality in which they live. This is a perfectly valid question to raise when
we take into consideration that, for example, the Polish Army Forces took part
in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and had 2500 soldiers in the south of the country
at the peak of their military action there. Another consequence of this specific
historical framework is a serious infringement on the semantic potential of the
last piece presented: Victoria Station. Though in a generally expressed critical
opinion the reviewers claim it to be the best of these plays, they pay least atten-
tion to it, probably overwhelmed by the overt historical references and unable to
decipher the key to its relevance and position in a sequence. Given the explicit
political context, the director’s decision to leave the play to the end and have it
watched by all the members of the audience becomes difficult to justify and im-
pairs the integrity of the whole.
The Homecoming in Warsaw 2007

A year later in December 2007 The Homecoming was staged in Warsaw at
Ateneum Theatre, and its premiere was welcomed enthusiastically by the critics
because, despite the Nobel Prize, Pinter was still a rarity on Polish stages even
in the capital. The theatre’s well–deserved reputation was built on an impres-
sive list of outstanding performances, among which The Caretaker from 1968 is
still considered one of the best Polish productions of Pinter’s plays (Michalczuk
2004, 312). Interviews with the director Barbara Sas proved her deep apprecia-
tion for the playwright’s style. Her recognition of the validity of every word and
every pause in a line prevented her from cutting anything from the original, a
practice that seems to have been an infamous contemporary trend (Rudziński
2009). Moreover, the cast consisted of a number of respected actors and Mar-
ian Kociniak, cast in the role of Max, gained great acclaim. His creation was so
appreciated as to be included among the twelve best male roles of the season
(Miłkowski 2008) and considered one of the best in his long and successful ca-
reer. His Max occupied the red armchair situated centrally on the stage as if it
were a throne, and his roaring tirades were both hateful and hypnotic. Kociniak
managed to capture in this bullying patriarch a ferocious will to hold power that
drains only at times when he realizes that he is fighting not only with his family
but also with time.
However, the production fell short of the aroused expectations, the tickets
did not sell and the performances were called off. One reason for this was that
in recent years the theatre, once considered ambitious and innovative, has been
severely criticized for its conservative attitude and gratification of popular tastes.
Used to being entertained by their favourite actors, the audience found it very dif-
ficult to face the world of intricacy and ambiguity. Moreover, as John Lahr states,
the world in The Homecoming realizes fully Pinter’s aesthetic that is a “precarious
balance between ambiguity and actuality” (2007), and in this production the bal-
ance is upset. As Henryk Rogacki writes, the play was staged as a sociological
laboratory study based on a situation that is perhaps not typical, but still feasible,
bordering on a naturalistic story taken directly from life (2008). In a generally
held critical opinion, the pivotal mechanism because of which the play retains its
air of ambiguity is Ruth’s characterization, which escapes easy classifications. She
is regarded as something of an enigma, and her behaviour has remained excep-
tionally difficult to interpret for it oscillates artfully between two opposite ends
of the scale: an exploited victim and a deft manipulator. The appearance of the
only woman in this all male group increases the tensions between the characters
to the point where they seem on the verge of rupturing relations from the inside,
and the ferocious battle for power gains an additional dimension. In the Warsaw
production, however, Magdalena Wójcik’s creation is the weakest point of the
performance for she resolves the ambiguity by overstressing the role with the in-
tensity of a cabaret sketch. She tries to prove so persistently that being a prostitute
is not so much a profession but a strain of personality that it leaves no room for
further interpretation. Her ostentatious acting does not resonate with sexuality
and femininity, thus missing the intensity inscribed in the dramatic text.
The Caretaker in Warsaw 2010

The last Pinter production to discuss is The Caretaker, which had its premiere
in February 2010 at Narodowy Theatre (the National Theatre) in Warsaw, and by
the time this research was completed in 2012 it has remained the only Pinter play
on Polish stages. The play was directed by Piotr Cieślak, who cast in the role of
Davies one of the best Polish actors, Janusz Gajos. Neither the renown of the the-
atre itself nor the fame and skill of the leading actor saved the production from
damaging criticism. “The performance is a disgrace for the National Theatre
that otherwise is a guarantee of a high artistic level” – says one of the critics in a
review under a self-evident title “Beware! The Caretaker terrifies!” (Sztarbowski
2010). Another concludes that the director did his best to prove that Pinter wrote
bad plays and adds that if the Nobel Prize Winner had a nightmare it would look
like the play staged at the National Theatre (Cieślak 2010). A highly respected
theatre critic, Joanna Derkaczew, writes that if the National Theatre wanted to
bring back Pinter on the Polish stage, it is hard to imagine a bigger mistake, for
the performance fails in every respect (2010).
The only words of praise were for Janusz Gajos, who built his character with
care and compassion. The actor constructed Davies out of tiny details and gestures,
out of the manner he perches on a chair, takes instinctively a step back
unaccustomed to an unexpected friendly gesture or fusses over a pair of shoes.

Gajos manages to capture subsequent stages of his transformation that are inti-
mately correlated with the position he holds at the moment in the ferocious battle
of wills, where momentary triumph coalescences with weakness, irritation, and
fear.
What is the reason for these poor reviews in the press? First and foremost,
the major drawback is that the performance communicated its message too
literally on almost every level. After a few seconds of the performance, even a
cursory look at the scenography is enough to understand that there is too much
of everything. The room, designed in the stage directions as cluttered and badly
kept, resembles the town rubbish dump, with old computers, toasters, cookers
and stereos piled up everywhere. As if this were not enough, rickety old chairs
are hanging from the ceiling, stuck in between the spotlights. On top of that, all
these decrepit utensils flash and glitter with colorful lights that are tied around
them as if they were a pathetic representation of a Christmas tree. This lack of
restraint is further exemplified when the director decides to conjure up the at-
mosphere of threat by a series of blackouts, by whispers and shadows lurking
in the dark. The overstatement also marks the performance of the actors, who
overdo their roles: the brothers emphasize the broad difference in their personal-
ities so strongly that they start to be unbelievable. The slowness and withdrawal
of Oscar Hamerski, as the elder brother, seems as artificial as the hyperactivity
of Karol Pocheć as Mick, jumping over the beds and around the room. Charac-
terizing Aston and Mick in exclusively extreme tones annihilates all the subtle
shades of meaning that underlie the exchanges they conduct with Davies, when
they sound off and dare one another, when they find and lose an ally, when they
stay or leave the room. Once these elements are missing, the dialogues become
rather long and tedious, and with the piles of rubbish flashing with bright lights,
an air of menace and foreboding gives way to a haunted house combined with a
flavour of cheap melodrama.
Common Traits
To sum up the above observations, it is relevant to cite a renowned Polish
theater critic, Janusz Majcherek, who as early as 1985 complained about the ab-
sence of Pinter on Polish stages. Majcherek put forward the daring suggestion
that Pinter is for the Polish theatre the touchstone of its quality, of its ability
to build a performance on dialogue and silence. Like Beckett, Chekhov, and
Strindberg, Pinter cannot be performed ad libitum; all that happens under or
in between the words cannot be replaced by the director’s simplifications or
scenographical solutions (Majcherek 1985). Perhaps the criticism in these words

is somewhat too severe and the tone too sinister, but after 20 years they still seem
to get down to the crux of the matter. In all the productions under discussion the
directors and actors wanted somehow to add something to Pinter, to add some-
thing he did not write, to make him more explicit, more readable for the recipi-
ent. The references to Nazi occupation, disturbing shadows in the background,
or overly expressionistic acting performances are aimed at helping the audience
grasp all the nuances of meaning in the play. Such a production fails both the text
and the audience, for it lacks trust in them. It fails the text because the director
does not trust it to communicate on its own without further exemplifications or
simplifications and thus commits the crime of tautology. It also fails the audi-
ence because it does not trust them to do without these apparent clarifications.
The Pinter audience may indeed be disorientated and confused more than once,
but the crime of tautology greatly reduces the ambiguity that opens up diverse
interpretational fields. The directors have failed to trust the text to be an excel-
lent vehicle of communication with the audience, as long as the delicate tissue of
meanings is not torn apart by the clarity of easy interpretational solutions.
Conclusion
When Marek Kędzierski writes on the reception of Beckett’s plays in Poland
in the sixties, he emphasizes that the political situation in the country led the art-
ists and consequently the viewers as well to play a hide-and-seek game with the
censors. It resulted in a flourishing art of allusion, and even plays that were not
overtly political were used as coded messages that the audience deciphered as a
comment on the currently burning issues of freedom and repression (Kędzierski
2009, 166). Analogically, Pinter’s plays, with their implications of threat and
games of domination and submission interwoven into exchanges of apparent
banalities, were highly appreciated, for they were considered to encapsulate the
situation of men sitting in the auditorium. The system changed, but the validity
of Pinter’s plays transcends the political system. However, in Poland Pinter seems
to be a victim of his own success, for the level of esteem accorded to his plays
in the 1960s and 70s resulted in the waning of interest among younger artists in
his plays. It seems that after the collapse of Communism, theatre practitioners
ceased to discern in Pinter the capacity to embody the essence of human relations
wholly permeated by power games, territorial struggles, and linguistic conflicts
that can occur over a glass of water, a pair of shoes or the remembrance of a first
date. Moreover, throughout his career Pinter emphasises that, irrespective of the
political system, power relations are inscribed in our attempts to comprehend
reality because it is mediated to us through language. These ideas might hold

immediate appeal to contemporary sensitivity only if theatre practitioners over-
come their prejudicial labeling that render his aesthetics obsolete. What is more,
the absence of his latest plays on Polish stages seems to suggest that directors
remain deaf to Pinter’s repeated warnings that a democratic system is not im-
mune to abuses of authority and we should be aware of the injustice carried out
in our names. For these reasons, in order not to be lulled by the complacency of
routine existence, we should hope that the process of Pinter’s rediscovery for the
Polish stage will continue. A flicker of hope can be noticed in two, seemingly un-
related events that could be indicative of changes to come. Firstly, most recently
Jadwiga Uchman published her new book Beckett. Pinter. Stoppard. Playwrights
and Directors, which may prove an invaluable source for all interested in con-
temporary British drama. Secondly, there can be observed a growing interest in
Pinter’s plays, especially from the later part of his career, among the student and
amateur theatres which in a way bridge the gap in the repertoires of mainstream
institutions. To all appearances, young people find it impossible to ignore the
power that emanates from the playwright’s simple words: “I feel I have an abso-
lute responsibility to resist” (Batty 2005, 90).
References
Batty, M. 2005. About Pinter: The Playwright & The Work. London: Faber and Faber.
Cieślak, J. 2010. Reżyser potrzebuje dozorcy. Rzeczpospolita, 44, 22 Feb. http://
www.e-teatr.pl/pl/artykuly/88360.html
Derkaczew, J. 2010. Dozorca na straży rupieci. Gazeta Wyborcza, 48, 26 Feb.
http://www.e-teatr.pl/pl/artykuly/88809.html
Hern, N. 1984. A Play and Its Politics: A Conversation between Harold Pinter
and Nicholas Hern. One for the Road, 5-23. New York: Grove Press.
Kędzierski, M. 2009. Samuel Beckett and Poland. In The International Reception
of Samuel Beckett, eds. M. Nixon, M. Feldman, 163-187, London: Continuum.
Lahr, J. 2007. Demolition Man, Harold Pinter and The Homecoming. The
New Yorker, 24 Dec. http://www.johnlahr.com/pinter.html
Majcherek, J. 1985. Pinteriana. Teatr, 2, 1 Feb. http://www.e-teatr.pl/en/artykuly/
96149.html
Michalczuk, J. 2004. Okruchy prawdy pod skorupą słowa. Z polskiej recepcji sce-
nicznej Dozorcy Harolda Pintera. In Dramat Obcy w Polsce w XIX i XX wieku,
eds. W. Kaczmarek, J. Michalczuk, 305-319, Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL.
Miłkowski, T. 2008. Teatr wraca do domu. Przegląd, 34. www.przeglad-tygodnik.

pl/pl/artykul/teatr-wraca-do-domu
Pawłowski, R. 2005. Harold Pinter. Pinter a polski teatr. Gazeta Wyborcza,
14 Oct. http://wyborcza.pl/1,76842,2966903.html
Rudziński, Ł. 2009. Młodzi wolą hasać po Szekspirze. Wywiad z Barbarą Sas.
http://kultura.trojmiasto.pl/Mlodzi-wola-hasac-po-Szekspirze-wywiad-z-
Barbara-Sass-n31492.html
Rogacki, I. 2008. Niech zostanie w rodzinie. Teatr, 2, Feb. http://www.e-teatr.pl/
pl/artykuly/52951.html
Sztarbowski, P. 2010. Uwaga! Dozorca straszy. Metro, 1775, Feb 23, 2010. http://
www.e-teatr.pl/pl/artykuly/88443.html
Taborski, B. 2006. Introduction. In Harold Pinter, Dramaty 1. Komedie zagrożeń.
trans. Bolesław Taborski, 5-45. Sulejówek: Agencja Dramatu i Teatru “ADiT”.
Uchman, J. 2011. Beckett. Pinter. Stoppard. Playwrights and Directors. Łódź:
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego.
Żak, S. 2006. Nowy stary ład świata. Gazeta Wyborcza – Kielce, 5 December.
http://www.e-teatr.pl/pl/artykuly/32463.html
Nursen Gömceli
Chapter Ten
Harold Pinter’s ‘Room’ on Turkish Stages: a
‘Dilemma’ Between Art and Politics?
Introduction
As stated by the critic Sue-Ellen Case, “art is not distinct from politics”
(1988, 6), hence when referring to the relationship between art and politics,
rather than a talk of a ‘dilemma’, one could think about the close link between the
two. However, when it comes to Harold Pinter’s room on Turkish stages, espe-
cially with regard to his explicitly political plays One for the Road and Mountain
Language, one inevitably thinks about the thin line between artistic purpose and
political purpose, and on which side of this line Turkish audiences and readers
place Harold Pinter.
In Turkey, Harold Pinter has been studied at both undergraduate and post-
graduate levels in universities, his plays have been staged in the theatres, articles
on Harold Pinter and his plays have been published, and he has been given at-
tention in the media. However, Pinter has never been a dramatist who received
support among large groups of audiences in Turkey. He has been either highly
praised or severely criticised in different quarters. The aim of this chapter will
be to discuss the reasons for Harold Pinter’s mixed reception by Turkish audi-
ences by having a look at his experiences in Turkey and his place in the Turkish
theatres, particularly with regard to his overtly political plays One for the Road
and Mountain Language.
Pinter in the News after his Death

A close look at some newspaper headlines in the Turkish press upon Harold
Pinter’s death in 2008 might disclose the approach to the playwright. To this
end, a detailed Google search was made on Google Türkiye, and related entries
on Google Türkiye and on the electronic news archive Ulusal Gazeteler (Engl.
National Newspapers) have been scanned. Subsequent to this, headlines of the
leading mainstream newspapers, such as Hürriyet, Milliyet, Sabah, Radikal;
some local newspapers like Gelawej, published in Kurdish and Turkish, and
Bianet, the Independent Communication Network promoting human rights
154 Nursen Gömceli
and freedom of expression; and a small scale socialist paper, Evrensel, have been
chosen. Some of the headlines in those papers read as follows1:
• “Nobel Prize-winning dramatist Harold Pinter dies” (Hürriyet 2008, 25 De-
cember; Milliyet 2008, 25 December; Ntvmsnbc 2008, 26 December);
• “Harold Pinter Nobel Prize-winning writer and defender of peace dies” (Radi-
kal 2008, 25 December);
• “Conscience of humanity is still” (Sabah 2008, 26 December);
• “We have lost Harold Pinter, friend of the Kurds” (Gelawej 2008, 26 December);
• “Harold Pinter: Turkey’s oppressed people lost their friend” (Bianet 2008, 27
December);
• He had written on the ban on Kurdish language” (Evrensel 2008, 27 December);
• “Pinter remembered for work on Kurdish rights in Turkey” (Hürriyet Daily
News 2008, 27 December).
On the whole, in these news items Pinter is mainly described as a “political
activist” (Radikal 2008, 25 December), “defender of human rights” (Ntvmsnbc
2008, 26 December; Radikal 2008, 25 December), “friend of the oppressed” (Gel-
awej 2008, 26 December), and an “anti-war activist” (Sabah 2008, 25 December).
Thus, as reflected in the given examples, when Pinter died, rather than his liter-
ary aspects, his political stance as a playwright occupied the foreground in the
Turkish press – a picture which was not much different during his lifetime. In
order to find the reasons for such an ambivalent approach to Pinter, one should
perhaps first have a look at Harold Pinter’s contact with Turkey.
Pinter’s Contact with Turkey

A key point in this regard is the production of One for the Road, staged at the
Lyric Theatre Studio in Hammersmith in 1984. Apparently, Pinter wrote this
play, which focuses on themes such as lack of freedom of expression and political
oppression, in the years when he had started to develop an interest in the politi-
cal situation in Turkey in the immediate ‘post-1980’ years. This was the period
when Turkey had just experienced a military coup, which resulted in restrictions
on personal freedom and freedom of expression at different levels. As Harold
Pinter’s biographer Michael Billington relates, he produced this play after meet-
ing two Turkish women “who seemed casually indifferent to the use of torture
in their country” at a party (qtd. in Spencer 2001). “Instead of strangling them,”
1 All translations from Turkish in this chapter are provided by N. Gömceli unless oth-
erwise specified.
Harold Pinter’s ‘Room’ on Turkish Stages 155
Pinter said, “I came back immediately, sat down and, it’s true, out of rage, started
to write One for the Road’” (qtd. in Spencer 2001). Indeed, Pinter’s first direct
contact with Turkey was in 1985, soon after the production of One for the Road,
when he visited Istanbul and Ankara together with Arthur Miller on behalf of
International PEN “to investigate,” as Pinter stated, “allegations of the torture
[in prisons] and persecution of Turkish writers” (Pinter 2005, 56). This five day
visit from the 17 to the 22 March, which resulted in further conflicts between
Pinter and some Turkish politicians and journalists when he criticised Turkey
for its treatment of imprisoned writers and thinkers, and for the ban on Kurdish
language immediately after the 1980 military coup, resulted in the production of
yet another overtly political play, Mountain Language. In an interview with Anna
Ford in 1988, Pinter gives the background to the play which takes linguistic op-
pression as its central theme and was staged at the National Theatre in London
in 1988, as follows:
It was a very vivid and highly illuminating trip in a number of ways. One of the things I
learnt while I was there was about the real plight of the Kurds: quite simply that they’re
not really allowed to exist at all and certainly not allowed to speak their language. /…/
When I got back from Turkey I wrote a few pages of Mountain Language, I did nothing
for three years with it and then, one day, earlier this year, I picked it up and suddenly
wrote it. (Smith 2005, 79-80)
Another significant date in disclosing Pinter’s interest in Turkey is 11 Decem-

ber 1997, when he attended the opening reception of the Peace Train Photo-
graphic Exhibition, presented by Julia Guest. At this reception, Pinter gave an
introductory speech critical of Turkey for its abuse of human rights and of the
British press and government for being supportive of Turkey and its politics2.
Seven years later, in 2004, Pinter was again in the news in the Turkish media,
this time for his support of a campaign against the Ilısu Dam Project in the
ancient city of Hasankeyf, which is located in south-eastern Turkey and is pre-
dominantly populated by citizens of Kurdish origin, as well as Arabs and Assyr-
ians (Ntvmsnbc 2008, 26 December). It is significant that Pinter gave his support
to such a campaign in Turkey, because when the controversial Ilısu Dam Project,
devised in 1954 to start hydroelectric power production and thus help water
storage and irrigation in the southeast of Turkey, was re-introduced by the Turk-
ish government in 2004 after a period of suspension for many years, it caused an
internal conflict between the supporters of this project and those against it. In
2 For the full speech, see Harold Pinter’s Introductory Speech (http://www.haroldpint-
er.org/politics/politics_ kurds.shtml).
156 Nursen Gömceli
the end this led to the launching of the “Save Hasankeyf ” campaign. Conducted
with the support of many non-government organisations nationwide, the cam-
paign aimed to protect this ancient city against flooding with the construction of
the dam and to enable the declaration of this historical area as a UNESCO Natu-
ral and Cultural World Heritage Site (Initiative 2011). However, among those
opposing the government on this undertaking, there were also some groups,
mainly with Kurdish background, who claimed that the true aim of the Ilısu
Dam Project was not to create efficient irrigation in the Hasankeyf area, but to
erase the cultural and historical traces of the people living in this ancient city,
and to force its people to leave their lands (Özgür Gündem 2011). Thus, taking
into consideration Pinter’s views on the Kurdish people in Turkey, which he had
also expressed in his speech at Julia Guest’s Peace Train Photographic Exhibition,
it could be argued that Pinter’s support for this campaign was in fact a political
act to take sides with the Kurdish people of the region, voicing such arguments.
At this stage, it should be remembered that Pinter was also a Patron of the EU
Turkey Civic Commission (EUTCC), founded in 2004 to contribute to the solu-
tion of the Kurdish problem (EUTCC).
As can be seen, in his contact with Turkey, Harold Pinter was always severely
critical of issues concerning Turkey’s internal politics; consequently, he became
known to the general public for his political views about Turkey rather than his
literary work as a dramatist, especially in the 1980s and early 1990s primarily
through the news in the press, where he was given considerable attention.
Pinter in the Academy

In the academy, however, Pinter has been highly valued for his art as a drama-
tist. According to the National Thesis Database of the Council of Higher Educa-
tion (Yükseköğretim Kurulu Ulusal Tez Merkezi), Harold Pinter is one of the
most widely studied contemporary British playwrights in Turkey in the field of
British drama with 25 theses, four of which are comparative analyses, written
between 1989 and 2012. With this rate, he takes second place between Samuel
Beckett (36 theses) and Tom Stoppard (16 theses) (Yükseköğretim 2013).
Pinter in Translation
As also stated in Yerebakan and Göktekin’s article, “Turkey Adventures of
Harold Pinter, the Playwright of Silence”, not many of Pinter’s plays have been
translated into Turkish, despite the fact that he has been highly praised and appre-
ciated in both the academy and the theatre in Turkey as a leading representative
of absurd drama and as one of the most distinguished dramatists of the 20th
century (2003, 47). So far, the following plays by Pinter have been translated
into Turkish: The Room (trans. by Ahmet Yaşar Özveri, n.d.), The Birthday Party
(trans. by Mehmet Fuat, 1965), The Dumb Waiter (trans. by Ergun Sav, 1962),
The Caretaker (trans. by Ahmet Yaşar Özveri, n.d.), Betrayal (trans. by Haluk
Bilginer, 1992), Old Times (trans. by Özcan Özer, 2011), No Man’s Land (trans.
not specified, 1970s?, unpublished), One for the Road (trans. by Aziz Çalışlar,
1989), Mountain Language (trans. by Aziz Çalışlar, 1989), Moonlight (trans. by
Filiz Ofluoğlu, 1993), The Proust Screenplay (trans. by Nigar Çapan, 1994), Ashes
to Ashes (trans. by Mehmet Ergen, n.d., unpublished), and Celebration (trans. by
İbrahim Yerebakan, 2010).
Needless to say, the translation of works written in a foreign language is
essential in reaching wider readers and audiences. As can be observed, however,
out of 29 Pinter plays only 13 have been translated into Turkish since the early
1960s, which means a period of over 50 years, and some of these translated plays
still remain unpublished, while very few of the published ones are available.
In this regard, I would like to make reference to a talk given by a Turkish
scholar, Sevcan Yılmaz from Yıldız Technical University in Istanbul, at a confer-
ence on art and translation in literature, held in Istanbul in 20073. As has been
explained by the scholar in an e-mail correspondence (2011, 16 September), in
her presentation, Theatre and Translation: The Silence of Harold Pinter Transla-
tions in Turkey, Yılmaz concludes that the most important reason for this silence
in Pinter translations in Turkey could be the attitude Harold Pinter adopted to-
wards Turkey with his statements on the issues of persecution and the Kurdish
problem. This could be accepted as a highly relevant observation because, as
Yılmaz points out in her research, although absurd drama has never received
great attention from Turkish audiences, which could make one think that the
lack of interest in the type of drama Pinter represents could be the major reason
for this silence, a wide range of Tom Stoppard plays, which are also examples of
absurd drama and also deal with political themes, like the abuse of human rights,
censorship, and oppression explicitly, have been translated widely into Turkish.
Hence, it could be stated that the picture we encounter at the end of this
analysis in the field of translation, which reveals the surprisingly small number
of Pinter plays translated over the years despite the attention the playwright has
3 Yılmaz, S. 2007. Tiyatro ve çeviri: Harold Pinter çevirlerinin Türkiye’deki sessizliği

[Theatre and Translation: The Silence of Harold Pinter Translations in Turkey]. Akşit
Göktürk’ü Anma Toplantısı. Istanbul University, Department of English Language and
Literature. Kuyucu Murat Paşa Medresesi, Istanbul. 9 March.
158 Nursen Gömceli
received in the academy and in the literary arena, closely corresponds with the
paradoxical approach to Harold Pinter and his drama in Turkey, where two of
his plays have also been translated into Kurdish: One for the Road and Moun-
tain Language4. At this stage, it is worthy of attention that not only has it been
these two specific plays chosen to be translated into Kurdish but these two plays
have remained the only Pinter plays that appeared in Kurdish in Turkey. As
widely known, having established themselves as the ‘outcome’ of Pinter’s close
observation of the Turkish political scene in the 1980s, One for the Road and
Mountain Language openly dramatise political oppression at different levels.
While the former depicts the persecution of thinkers and intellectuals impris-
oned on political grounds, and thematises the lack of freedom of speech and
freedom of thought in an authoritarian regime, the latter exposes linguistic op-
pression in a similar structure, enforcing individuals to speak the “language of
the capital” and not their own language, as part of a “military decree” (Pinter
1991, 397, 395). Since they give voice to the violation of the ‘oppressed’, it is
highly suggestive that these two political plays have been the only Pinter plays
translated into Kurdish in Turkey.
From Page to the Stage – Pinter Productions in Turkey

Pinter’s first encounter with Turkish audiences was in 1960 with The Care-
taker staged by a private theatre company, Kent Players’s “Site Theatre” in Istan-
bul (Yerebakan and Göktekin 2003, 48). In the next decade, The Birthday Party,
The Dumb Waiter and No Man’s Land were introduced to Turkish audiences
by the state theatre (Yerebakan and Göktekin 2003, 48). In the 1980s, however,
soon after his unwelcome visit to Turkey, Pinter put a ban on the production of
his plays in Turkey, a ban which would last until the 1990s, when Betrayal and
The Dumb Waiter were put on stage by private theatre companies in Istanbul.
More recent productions in the last decade, precisely between 2002 and 2012,
include The Birthday Party, The Dumb Waiter, Betrayal, One for the Road, Moun-
tain Language, Ashes to Ashes, Old Times, and Celebration, all of which, except for
The Dumb Waiter, were produced by private theatre companies.
Among these plays, The Dumb Waiter has been the play which has reached
the biggest group of audiences, with seven revivals in ten years between 2002 and
4 Both plays were translated in 1989 by the Kurdish writer Mehmet Uzun (http://mimesis-
dergi.org/2010/10/eski-gunler), and the Kurdish translation of Mountain Language was
published in 1991 by the Kurdish publishing house ‘Doz’, based in Istanbul (http://urun.
gittigidiyor.com/ZIMANE-CIYA-Oyun-HaroldPINTER_W0QQidZZ23497298).
2012. Starting with a production in Ankara in May 2002 by Ankara State Theatre
(Ezici 2002), the play continued to be staged by Trabzon State Theatre, with four
successive revivals in the city of Trabzon in November 2006, May 2007, Febru-
ary 2008 and January 2011 (Trabzon Devlet Tiyatrosu 2012), and with one pro-
duction in Ankara in November 2010 (Koçak 2010). Soon after this production
by Trabzon State Theatre, the play had another performance in Ankara, which
was produced by a private theatre company, Mythos Art, on 26 November 2010
(Tiyatronline 2010). According to the present director of Ankara State Theatre,
Akif Yeşilkaya (2008), who was also the director of the play in 2002, The Dumb
Waiter has had its greatest productions all over the world in Turkey, with large au-
diences at every performance; some have even seen the play five or six times, and
the general audience reaction was that it was a very good critique of the system.
Interestingly enough, when the staging frequency of these Pinter plays in
the Turkish theatres between 2002 and 2012 is analysed, it can be observed that
while plays like The Birthday Party, Betrayal, Ashes to Ashes, Old Times, and
Celebration each were given only one performance over this ten year period, two
other plays, One for the Road and Mountain Language, were revived repeatedly,
like The Dumb Waiter. For instance, One for the Road, which was put on stage
also by amateur theatre groups in the 1990s, was staged in 2006 by a private
theatre company, Akbank Art New Generation Theatre in Istanbul as part of a
double bill with Ashes to Ashes (Deniz 2006), and the play had its latest produc-
tion again in Istanbul in 2012 by Galatasaray University Theatre Group (GSUTT
2012). Likewise, Mountain Language was given four performances by Diyarbakır
Municipal Theatre (DMT) between 2009 and 2010. The first performance was
in Diyarbakır in December 2009 (Medya 73 2009, 4 December), the second in
Batman in February 2010 (Haberler.com 2010, 1 March) and the third was in
Adıyaman in May 2010 (Diyarbakır Haber 2010, 3 May). All of these are cities
located in southeast Turkey. Other than these southeastern cities, Diyarbakır
Municipal Theatre also staged Mountain Language in Ankara in September
2010, where it was presented in both Kurdish and Turkish (Özbalı 2010).
As can be seen in this analysis on ‘Pinter plays staged’ and ‘Pinter plays trans-
lated’ for Turkish audiences and readers, in Turkey Harold Pinter has also re-
ceived attention among people of Kurdish origin. However, as we have tried to
show, the plays translated into Kurdish and staged especially in the cities which
are predominantly populated by citizens of Kurdish origin, like Diyarbakır,
Batman and Adıyaman, have been limited to two plays only: One for the Road
and Mountain Language, which have never had professional performances in
Turkey. One could argue that it is here that the ‘dilemma’ begins between art and
politics in the approach to Harold Pinter and his drama.
160 Nursen Gömceli
Staging Pinter for Art or Politics?

To start with, in Turkey Mountain Language has never been staged by state
theatres but only by private theatre companies mainly run by people of Kurdish
origin, and it has been staged in both Turkish and Kurdish. Interestingly enough,
when the same play was staged by the same theatre company in Adıyaman and in
Ankara, audience reaction to the play was highly antithetical. For instance, while
the reviews for the performance in Adıyaman are positive and report that the
play drew “intense interest” (Diyarbakır Haber 2010, 3 May) from a big group of
audience, the reviews for the Ankara performance in Ankara Art Theatre (AST)
inform that “the play was attended by very few people” (Özbalı 2010). Similarly,
while One for the Road was well-received by audiences in the southeast perfor-
mances, it was given little support in Istanbul. For instance, one actor who played
in One for the Road in the Istanbul performance, Serhat Tutumluer, has stated
that at some performances, some people simply left in the middle of the play, or
admitted that they found it “extremely boring” (Deniz 2006, 41).
In One for the Road, a one-act play that takes place in an unspecified location
functioning as a prison house in an unknown country, the oppressive regime
victimising innocent people for their ‘thoughts’ is represented by the officer/
interrogator Nicolas, who exercises power and verbal violence over the physi-
cally as well psychologically tortured Victor. He is “presumably a dissident intel-
lectual” (Spencer 2001), described by Nicolas as “a civilised man” of the “highest
intelligence” with a “lovely house” and “[l]ots of books” (Pinter 1991, 365, 369).
As the play unfolds, we learn that not only Victor but also his wife Gila and their
seven year old son Nicky have been taken prisoner in separate rooms in the same
place. When Gila appears on stage, she is “bruised” and “her clothes are torn”
(Pinter 1991, 378) like Victor’s, and Nicolas’s words reveal that she has also been
violated sexually, having been raped by his men upstairs. In the course of the play,
Nicolas, the ultimate power and authority in the prison who “run[s] the place”
and claims the “voice of God speaks through [him]” (Pinter 1991, 366, 368), dis-
closes that Victor and Gila have been victimised for having committed the ‘crime
of thought’: “[your father] didn’t think, like you shitbags” (Pinter 1991, 368), he
shouts at Gila, during the interrogation scene. Moreover, they have raised their
child as a disobedient and rebellious figure “spit[ting]” and “strik[ing]” at the
“soldiers” (Pinter 1991, 384) of the country – in other words, as disobedient to
military authority. Feeling the invisible power and control of the “man who runs
[that] country” (Pinter 1991, 372) over himself, and needing to show his loyalty
to his ruler, Nicolas reminds Victor about the ‘oneness’ of nation, quoting his
ruler: “We are all patriots, we are as one, we all share a common heritage”, and he
adds: “Except you, apparently” (Pinter 1991, 374), making Victor conscious of his
repugnant existence in that country.
At the end of the play, it is implied through Victor’s mention of his tongue and
his inability to speak freely that his tongue has been mutilated, which is the ty-
rant’s purposeful persecution of his victim for his crime of thought. Thus Victor
is not only rendered as an individual lacking the freedom to express his thoughts
in an oppressive rule, but he also permanently loses his ability to give voice to his
thoughts regarded as a threat to the persistence of the order in a system where
the “army overrules democracy and where torture, rape, and murder are used
against those who are deemed to be enemies of the State” (Macaulay 2001). In
the final scene of the play, Victor learns that he has been set free and that his wife
will join him soon but he cannot show any sign of happiness, as he also receives
indirectly the tragic news that his son has been killed. Thus symbolising the
future, the child disobedient to (military) authority is simply ‘removed’ from the
scene, giving the message that disobedience to and rebellion against the system
in any non-democratic regime will not be allowed to exist, and so the play ends
in a blackout.
In Mountain Language, again a one-act play which takes place in a prison, Pint-
er portrays another form of oppression, this time linguistic oppression exercised
on the prisoners and their visiting family members who represent the unspeci-
fied minority in an unspecified country, described in the play as the “mountain
people” speaking the “mountain language” (Pinter 1991, 395). Interestingly, de-
spite the fact that there is no single reference to any specific geography or nation-
ality in the play, which makes the work universal, mainly because Pinter wrote
this play after his visit to Turkey in 1985, Mountain Language has widely been
believed to be about the situation in Turkey in the period after the 1980 military
coup. At that time a ban was put on the Kurdish language with the 1982 Turkish
Constitutional Law, which was removed nine years later in 1991. However, when
the Times Literary Supplement, where the play first appeared in full text before
it was released as a book, published Mountain Language with the advertisement
that the play was “inspired” by [Pinter’s] trip to Turkey with Arthur Miller and
was “about /…/ the fate of the Kurdish people” (qtd. in Pinter 1988, 1109), Pinter
immediately refuted the idea in a letter he wrote to the literary review stating that
it was “true” (Pinter 1988, 1109), that the play was “inspired” (qtd. in Pinter 1988,
1109), by his trip to Turkey, but the statement that it was a play “about /…/ the
fate of the Kurdish people” (qtd. in Pinter 1988, 1109), was an “assertion” made
“without consultation with the author [Pinter]” (Pinter 1988, 1109). Similarly, in
his interview with Anna Ford in 1988, Pinter again explained that the play was
not about [emphasis N.G.] Turkey:
162 Nursen Gömceli
The springboard /…/ was the Kurds, but this play is not about the Turks and the Kurds.
/…/ throughout history, many languages have been banned – the Irish have suffered,
the Welsh have suffered and Urdu and the Estonians’ language banned; the Basques’
language was banned, you know, at various times. (Smith 2005, 80)
Thus, Pinter fully clarified the idea that, although the play was ‘inspired’ by
Turkey, it had a universal relevance, aiming to make its audiences and readers
aware of the lack of freedom of expression resulting from linguistic oppression
in any [my emphasis] society.
In Mountain Language, which opens at the prison with women waiting in
line for permission from the officers to see their imprisoned family members,
an oppressive atmosphere dominates in the very beginning of the play with the
Officer and the Sergeant’s rough inhumane treatment of the Young Woman and
the Elderly Woman, expecting to see their husband and son, respectively. The
Elderly Woman’s hand has been bitten by a dog and is bleeding, but she cannot
express herself not knowing the language of the Officer and the Sergeant without
the help of the Young Woman, who soon proves to be ‘different from’ the Elderly
Woman with her articulate speech. While the Elderly Woman in pain just stares
at the Officer without saying any word and tries to communicate with him by
body language showing him her injured hand, the Young Woman with her confi-
dence and articulate speech attracts the attention of the Officer and the Sergeant,
who after some inspection agree that “she doesn’t come from the mountain”
since she “doesn’t speak the mountain language” (Pinter 1991, 396).
In the meantime, while all the women are still waiting in line, the Sergeant
and the Officer intensify the oppressive atmosphere even more with their
coarse language and insulting words against the “men [they] have been waiting
to see”, calling their fathers, sons and husbands provocatively “enemies of the
State” (Pinter 1991, 395). Moreover, the Officer, as the authority representing
the State, exercises his oppressive power over the desperate women by giving
them a strict warning about the ‘forbidden language’ before they are allowed to
meet their family members in prison, following a “military decree”:
Now hear this. You are mountain people. You hear me? Your language is dead. It is for-
bidden. It is not permitted to speak your mountain language in this place. You cannot
speak your language. It is not permitted. Do you understand? You may not speak it. It
is outlawed. You may only speak the language of the capital. That is the only language
permitted in this place. This is a military decree. It is the law. Your language is forbidden.
It is dead. No one is allowed to speak your language. Your language no longer exists.
In the Turkish context, this extract above has been the most widely quoted
part from Mountain Language in the works and newspaper articles discussing
the play and its relevance to Turkey. Such texts draw parallels between the do-
mestic situation, with regard to the ban on the Kurdish language in the 1980s,
and the scene depicted by Pinter under the influence of his close observations in
Turkey around the same time.
Likewise, the last scene of the play displaying the Elderly Woman and her
prisoner son together in the visitor’s room, has been regarded as a dramati-
sation of the situation in Turkey in those years. In this scene, indicating his
physical torture, the Prisoner appears on stage with “blood on his face” and
“sits trembling”, while his mother is motionless, “still” (Pinter 1991, 404). The
silence in the scene is disrupted by the accompanying guard’s announcement
that “[t]hey’ve changed the rules” and that “[the Elderly Woman] can speak in
her own language. Until further notice” (Pinter 1991, 404). However, this un-
expected news bringing them a temporary freedom of speech and expression
does not mean much for the mother and the son. Having probably witnessed
the physical torture of her son, as suggested in the opening stage directions,
the Elderly Woman completely loses her ability to speak even in her own lan-
guage, in her “strong rural accent” (Pinter 1991, 397), which she could hardly
employ in her first direct encounter with her son either, and remains speech-
less and voiceless at the end of the play, subjecting her son to an even greater
suffering.
Years later, in an interview with Elizabeth Sakellaridou, on his visit to the
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on 18 April 2000, Pinter restated that he
got the ‘inspiration’ for Mountain Language from his Turkey trip (Yerebakan
and Göktekin 2003, 51-2), revealing his consistency in what he said about the
background to the play. Nevertheless, the two plays briefly discussed above, One
for the Road and Mountain Language, have always found a place in the Turkish
media along with Pinter’s political views and statements about Turkey. He voiced
these in strong language most of the time especially when his concern was the
issue of human rights and the Kurdish problem. In the end, as was rightly ob-
served in Hürriyet Daily News soon after the playwright’s death, Pinter indeed
came to be known to the Turkish public as a dramatist “best remembered here
for his advocacy of Kurdish rights” (2008, 27 December). Thus, one could argue
that in Turkey at some stages Pinter’s identity as a political activist has over-
shadowed his identity as a dramatist to the extent of affecting the reception of
his plays, resulting even in the instrumentalisation of his plays as a means of
political propaganda, a has been shown in the examples of One for the Road and
Mountain Language.
164 Nursen Gömceli
Conclusion
On the whole, it might be true to state that, although Harold Pinter has been
highly valued as one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century in Turkey, his
room on Turkish stages has largely been a silent one, which has not been visited
so much over the years, perhaps leaving theatregoers in a ‘dilemma’ between art
and politics.
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Pinter across the Atlantic
Susan Hollis Merritt
Chapter Eleven1
Being and Not Being Harold Pinter:
Pinter Still in Play in the USA2
Introduction: Contexts of the Belarus Free Theatre’s

Being Harold Pinter
When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate.
But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a
never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the
mirror—for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.
I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching,
unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real
truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon
us all. It is in fact mandatory.
If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no
hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us—the dignity of man.
—Pinter, “Art, Truth and Politics”
Harold Pinter presented his Nobel Lecture “Art, Truth and Politics” via video
at the Swedish Academy on 7 December 2005. The video and the text were both
posted online by the Nobel Prize organization and distributed through various
media worldwide, and it was privately printed in a limited edition by Faber and
Faber. Pinter’s conclusion—my epigraph, as quoted above (23–24)—and shorter
passages are among the “beads” from his works threaded throughout the theatri-
cal production Being Harold Pinter, adapted and directed by Vladimir Shcherban,
and staged by the Belarus Free Theatre, co-founded by the husband-and-wife
1 © 2013, Susan Hollis Merritt, All Rights Reserved.

2 This essay is a revised and updated version of my plenary speech presented at the con-
ference Pinter Abroad: Other Stages, Other Rooms, at the University of Maribor on
23 September 2011. I thank Professor Tomaž Onič for inviting my participation in the
conference and for his extraordinary stewardship of all the logistics. I am grateful to
Professor Onič and his colleagues for their unsurpassed hospitality and collegiality, which
made the conference such an enjoyable and enlightening experience for all involved.
170 Susan Hollis Merritt
team Nikolai Khalezin and Natalia Koliada in March 2005. This “outlawed” Be-
larusian troupe’s most internationally performed and acclaimed work, Being
Harold Pinter had its UK debut at the conference Artist and Citizen: 50 Years of
Performing Pinter, organized by Mark Taylor-Batty, at the University of Leeds
Workshop Theatre, on 13 April 2007, as part of a weekend celebration of the
University’s awarding an honorary degree to Pinter. I experienced it as a par-
ticipant in that conference, where it was introduced to the audience by Sir Tom
Stoppard, who had by then become a patron of the Belarus Free Theatre. He
had discovered what he later called their “marvelous work” in 2005, when they
invited him to Minsk; for his playwriting workshop, they took him to a vil-
lage outside of Minsk to avoid drawing attention from the authorities.3 He had
suggested to them that they consider performing Harold Pinter’s plays, which
related to their concerns, but Pinter’s plays were not yet available in translation
in Belarus (Koliada 2011; cf. Del Signore 2011).4 Stoppard wrote to Pinter about
their interest in performing his work, and Pinter permitted them to adapt and to
perform it worldwide, without payment of royalties, leading to their UK debut
in Leeds and their meeting Pinter for the first time. Although Pinter was not
feeling well enough to attend their performance of Being Harold Pinter, he came
afterward, and from the audience he engaged those on stage in a moving post-
performance discussion, with the assistance of an interpreter (cf. Koliada 2008).
In an entry about the experience, posted in his own Guardian Theatre Blog from
Leeds (“The Importance of Being Pinter”), Pinter’s official biographer Michael
Billington (2007b) describes Being Harold Pinter as “a staggering collage,”
3 Stoppard, as quoted in E. Blake 2008. Cf. Stoppard 2005 and Peghinelli 2012.
4 Koliada told Del Signore (2011):
It took us about a year because the plays were not translated into the Russian or
Belarusian language but luckily for us, Harold Pinter received the Nobel Prize and
his plays were translated. There were a few plays like Ashes to Ashes and [The] New
World Order that were not translated and we did our own translation when we got
his permission. It was a brilliant idea of [adapter and director] Vladimir Shcherban
to build all of it on Pinter’s Nobel speech about how he created plays, how he found
his characters and about involvement in politics, the position of artists in politics
and human dignity. It was an absolutely amazing speech that was used as back-
ground for his plays. … Then we got letters of political prisoners of Belarus; they
were interviewed and incorporated into this piece in order to show the transforma-
tion from the domestic violence that existed in Pinter’s plays to State violence. In the
end, it’s a transformation of the nature of violence from his plays to the reality that
takes place in Belarus today.
Being and Not Being Harold Pinter 171
recognizing: “The more you travel, the more you realise the universal resonance
of Pinter’s studies of political oppression.”
Nearly five years later, on 4 April 2011, in her guest post in the Guardian’s
Theatre Blog, entitled “Cry Freedom: How Theatre Helps Us Fight for Human
Rights in Belarus,” Koliada explains that she and Khalezin are called “public
enemies” in Belarus “because between 30 March 2005 and 19 December 2008,
we ran the Belarus Free Theatre,” performing whatever, wherever, and however
they wanted to, aiming to make their “spectators think”— “of course the most
terrifying part of any dictatorship.” She cites their director, Vladimir Shcherban,
who says, “We speak the issues that the audience keeps silent on.” For example,
their first production, 4.48 Psychosis, by the late Sarah Kane (a playwright whom
Pinter admired and supported), brought the taboo subjects of mental illness
(depression) and the prevalence of suicide in Belarus out in the open, antago-
nizing the authorities, who tried to shut them down (Stoppard 2005). Koliada
concludes: “And it’s important to refer, every day of our lives, to what our patron
and friend Harold Pinter said in his Nobel speech,” reproducing most of its three
final paragraphs as a single passage.
Repurposing Pinter: From Belarus to New York City

The Belarus Free Theatre staged the US première of Being Harold Pinter at the
Under the Radar Festival, produced by the Public Theater, at La MaMa Experi-
mental Theatre Club, in New York City, where it ran from 5 through 16 January
2011 (Shcherban 2011c). According to its billing,
[Being Harold Pinter] incorporates transcripts from Belarusian political prisoners with
excerpts from Harold Pinter’s lifetime of writings. Creating visually striking images with
simple means and underscoring the fierceness of Pinter’s words with the intense physi-
cality of the actors, Being Harold Pinter blurs the boundaries between art and reality,
delivering a poignant contemporary commentary on violence, oppression, freedom and
human dignity. (BWW News Desk 2011)
The work fuses events in Pinter’s own life experience; passages from his Nobel
Lecture: “Art, Truth and Politics” (2005), illustrated by or juxtaposed against per-
formances of extracts from The Homecoming (1964), Old Times (1970), One for
the Road (1984), The New World Order (1991), Mountain Language (1993), and
Ashes to Ashes (1996); and testimonies written by Belarusian political prisoners.
Spoken in Russian and Belarusian, translations of the texts are projected in Eng-
lish supertitles on screens above the highly physical stage action.
In repurposing Pinter’s works through the lens of Belarusian realities, Being
Harold Pinter both appropriates and illuminates Pinter’s distinctions between
“truth in art” and “truth in politics,” relating Pinter’s life and work to their
own.5 At the start, an actor embodies Harold Pinter on stage. With the shock-
ing theatricality of Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty (cf. A Spurt of Blood), as another
actor sprays red paint on his forehead, which gets on the actors’ hands, “Pinter”
speaks his words about a nasty fall he took, in Dublin, after his 75th birthday
celebrations (10 Oct. 2005), gashing his head, so that “There was blood all over
the place” (quoted in Billington 2005; see n. 5). Back in London, on 13 Octo-
ber, he received the official phone call telling him that he had won the Nobel
Prize in Literature. Later that day, when Michael Billington (2005) interviewed
him about his reaction for the Guardian, he acknowledged having learned that
Sky News had mistakenly announced that he was dead before “changing their
mind”—“No, he’s won the Nobel Prize.”6 He quipped: “So I’ve risen from the
dead.”7 Three years later, on 25 December 2008, Antonia Fraser sadly announced
that, on the previous evening, Pinter had died. News of his death occasioned
tributes and memorial remembrances worldwide. The Belarus Free Theatre was
getting ready to debut Being Harold Pinter (Shcherban 2009), in Australia, at the
Sydney Festival, which became dedicated to Pinter. Beginning their Australian
5 From a press release describing the Eighth Annual Prelude Festival, in e-mail sent by
the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center on 15 Sept. 2011, I am borrowing the following
definition of repurposing as: “taking preexisting works, events or texts as the basis for
new performances.”
6 On 13 October 2005, in a video news report that went viral on YouTube, the Sky News
presenter, Ginny Buckley, first announced Pinter’s death instead of his winning the
Nobel Prize and then, apparently following directions from her earpiece, corrected
herself. She even mispronounced Harold as Howard at first (Sky News 2005).
7 Pinter related his own sense of the irony of these events to Billington (2005):
I’ve been through the most extraordinary five days. I went to Dublin for the festival
of my work last Thursday. I had the most wonderful weekend. The Gate theatre
did me proud. I was very stirred and affected by the whole damn thing. And then
I went to get my plane on Monday and it was raining. I’ve been through various
health problems so I was walking with a stick. I put my stick out of the car and the
stick slipped and I went with it and hit my head on a very hard piece of pavement.
There was blood all over the place and a trench in my forehead. I was in hospital
for four hours and I had nine stitches. One moment I was enjoying life greatly. The
next moment I thought I was going to die. I recovered but it’s been an extraordinary
up-and-downer. And then the Nobel news came through this morning. I was told
today that one of the Sky channels said this morning that ‘Harold Pinter is dead’.
Then they changed their mind and said, ‘No, he’s won the Nobel Prize.’ So I’ve risen
from the dead.
tour, on 27 December 2008, Natalia Koliada posted in her memorial tribute

“Our Friend Harold Pinter”: “It is hard to imagine what an author whose name
is mentioned in the name of the production may feel when there is an actor on
stage playing the part of this author, and his own multiplied eyes are looking at
the playwright from the backcloth.” Ten months earlier, after first experiencing
their work in London, Pinter had reportedly told a journalist: “I felt proud about
what I’d written” (quoted in D. Gordon 2011; cf. Pordes 2011).
Tom Stoppard introduced the Belarus Free Theatre’s Being Harold Pinter in
both its UK debut in Leeds, in April 2007, and its US debut, in New York City,
in January 2011. “What I saw in Minsk,” Stoppard said, “is much closer to a true
theatre, to its sources, to its true objective” (quoted in E. Blake 2008). Although
Pinter could attend only the after-performance discussion in Leeds, in 2007, his
interaction with the troupe was electric: exciting, entertaining, and deeply mov-
ing. Pinter gestured with his cane at the remnants of a crushed red apple left on
stage: Pinter: “What’s that?” Koliada: “Apple.” Pinter: “Good.” Audience laughter.
The crushed red apple alludes visually to the Elderly Woman telling her impris-
oned son, “I have apples—” in Mountain Language (Pinter 1988, 29).
Before the final three paragraphs of “Art, Truth and Politics” quoted in both
Being Harold Pinter and Koliada’s memorial tribute and in my epigraph, Pinter
read an English translation of an extract from the 1936 poem “Explico Algunas
Cosas” (“I’m Explaining a Few Things”), written by the 1971 Nobel laureate
Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), when Neruda was in Spain, where he was a Chilean
consul, “shortly after the murder of his friend, the Spanish poet Federico García
Lorca, by Franco’s fascists” (Swans Commentary 2002). It ends with the refrain
“Come and see the blood in the streets!” Next Pinter read his own 1998 poem
“Death,” inspired by the death of his father, linked in his imagination to “the
disappeared” in Chile and Nicaragua.
Harold Pinter must have recognized instinctively the “purpose” of the crushed
red-and-white pulp. Crushed red apples are a theatrical metaphor (metonymy)
for crushed human beings, crushed lives, crushed hopes and dreams. As Alfred
Hickling (2007) says, “crushed apples provide a cloying metaphor for suppressed
personal liberties”—remnants of power struggles dramatized throughout Pinter’s
creative works and a recurrent theme in his political writings (cf. R. Gordon
2012, 1–3): the powerless feeling the boot of the powerful; dreading the “knock”
on the “door” by “the Gestapo,” as Pinter has suggested (quoted in Merritt
1995, 179).
The next year, on 20 February 2008, Pinter finally got to experience Being
Harold Pinter in the Gala Benefit for the Belarus Free Theatre staged at the
Soho Theatre, in London (Shcherban 2008). His health more frail at that time,
he introduced the company himself from the audience. Afterward, Pinter com-
mented to inquiring journalists that the Belarus Free Theatre performed his
plays in “an astonishingly emotional way” (quoted in E. Blake 2008). He echoed
Stoppard in adding, “They’re bringing back the essence and the true meaning of
the theatre” (quoted in E. Blake 2008).8
By the time the Free Theatre was to perform Being Harold Pinter at the January
2011 Under the Radar Festival in New York City (Shcherban 2011c), the political
situation in Belarus had deteriorated. On 19 December 2010, members of the
troupe took part in “unsanctioned” street demonstrations after the “rigged” re-
election of the incumbent president, Aleksandr (Alexander) Lukashenko, “who
took power in 1994 in the country’s last truly free election” and “declared a land-
slide victory” in 2010 (Mackey 2010). The demonstrations resulted in “thousands
of protestors” being beaten by the police and hundreds being arrested and re-
ceiving long unjustified prison sentences. Koliada was detained with others in
a police van serving as a portable holding pen, “threatened with” murder and
rape, and denied “access to her lawyer” (Oliphant 2010). After a clerical error led
a judge to release her before sentencing, Khalezin and Koliada, their youngest
daughter, and members of the company secretly left Minsk in small groups, con-
cealed in separate vehicles, so that they could perform at the Under the Radar
Festival in New York, arriving on 3 January 2011 (Jones 2011b).
Two days later, on 5 January 2011, Being Harold Pinter debuted at the La MaMa
ETC (Experimental Theatre Club).9 Like most other critics, Jacob Gallagher-
Ross (2011) observes: “Knowledge of the company’s (and its country’s) plight
8 Press releases and online advertisements for the Belarus Free Theatre omit some of
Pinter’s words (as quoted in E. Blake 2008), apparently misquoting his phrase “the
essence and the true meaning of the theatre” as “the essence meaning of the theatre.”
Cf. Koliada 2008 and 2011.
9 They arrived the week before the death of Ellen Stewart, the founder of La MaMa, who
is credited with helping to “establish the Off Off Broadway scene” in the 1960s (Healy
2011; cf. Weber and Gussow 2011). Gallagher-Ross (2011) posted a perceptive review
of the troupe’s performance, introducing it thus: “The almost suicidally daring Belarus
Free Theatre, who, while at home in Europe’s last remaining dictatorship, perform
under constant threat of arrest (or far worse) from an intelligence apparatus still un-
apologetically called the KGB, barely made it to New York to present their new piece,
Being Harold Pinter, at this year’s Under the Radar Festival.” His review “Belarus Free
Theatre’s Being Harold Pinter Is No Slight Ache” leads with: “The Eastern European
Company Makes It Bravely to Under the Radar.” In her own account, Natalia Koliada
(2011; cf. Jones 2011b) says that they felt as if they were operating “under the radar” in
getting out of Belarus.
lends the urgency of real, existing atrocities to the piece….”10 On 6 January, the
New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley (2011c) mentions in his review of
Being Harold Pinter that he read a colleague’s account of the troupe’s escape from
Belarus (Rohter 2011; cf. Rohter 2010). In “Political Theater, Brought to You by
the Politically Powerless,” Brantley lauds the Belarus Free Theatre’s staging of
Being Harold Pinter at La MaMa: “A playwright’s legacy throbs with anguished,
enduring life in ‘Being Harold Pinter,’ a work of harrowing intensity and com-
mitment.” He says that while “this theatrical collage … uses Pinter’s writings to
address abuses of power in Belarus, it never twists or distorts” in doing so. In
Brantley’s view, Being Harold Pinter “sheds revelatory light on works often re-
garded as shadowy to the point of opacity” and provides “a compelling continuity
in dramas as far apart in time (and seemingly sensibility) as ‘The Homecoming’
(1964) and ‘Ashes to Ashes’ (1996).” In the New York Times weekly theater listings
for 14–20 January 2011, Brantley (2011b) adds: “This work of harrowing intensity
and commitment … is a testament to the power of a single playwright [Harold
Pinter] to inspire, to illuminate and give articulate voice to powerlessness.” In his
longer review Brantley (2011c) mentions that, in contrast to Pinter’s renowned
10 Gallagher-Ross (2011) points out:

In Being Harold Pinter, the playwright’s own writings become the vehicle by which
the company fulfills his demand for dauntless inquiry. Beginning with Pinter’s
early domestic plays like The Homecoming and moving to more explicitly politi-
cal works like One for the Road, we watch violence metastasize from household to
state. Fathers bully sons, spurring violent rebellion; husbands and wives obsessively
question one another. Then, government-sponsored atrocity explodes into view, as
hooded prisoners are shoved into bureaucratic torture factories, and baseless pun-
ishments are administered with bored proficiency…. The ensemble performs these
unsettling scenes with ferocious relish. As they casually toss off Pinter’s blunt-force
insults during interrogations (“Fuckpig!”) or abruptly shift from purring menace to
power-drunk rage, we realize that they know what this kind of brutality is like.
Significantly, he adds:
Despite these searing sequences, the most fearful events in Being Harold Pinter are
those we’re left to picture ourselves. Towards the end of the piece, in near-darkness, lit
only by the flickering beam of a flashlight passed from hand to hand, the actors, kneel-
ing and hooded, matter-of-factly relate actual stories of persecution and brutality as
strange and cruel as any Pinter could have dreamed up. We hear of death threats,
savage beatings, arbitrary imprisonments—a terrible inventory of repression. The
unanswered question left behind by the piece is how we spectators will answer the
unswerving bravery of the Free Theatre’s artists and the terrifying truths they stage.
“understatement,” an “overemphasis … slightly cripples some sequences,” but

extols “the fierceness, sorrow and theatrical electricity that crackle through-
out this extraordinary production” as “pure Pinter.” Perhaps not realizing that
“Pinter” alludes ironically to a blunder on Sky News (2005), Brantley observes
that early in the work, “Pinter is heard speaking of his own imminent death.” He
concludes: “‘Being Harold Pinter’ suggests he never died at all” (my italics).
Such wishful critical consolation—a form of denial—has become a motif in
the many memorial tributes, programs, and posthumous productions of Pinter’s
work and responses to them. One way of dealing with such a great loss as the
death of Harold Pinter in 2008 has been for us to imagine that Harold Pinter still
lives—is still “being”: his “voice” continues to speak to us, to be “alive,” to have
“risen from the dead,” as he put it, through his works, theatrical productions of
them, continuing experiences of them, and critical commentaries on them. An
advantage of being both a great writer and a great man is that, as his widow Lady
Antonia Fraser told the Guardian after his death, he will “never be forgotten.”
Through his work, Harold Pinter lives on metaphorically, “in posterity.”11
Pinter Still in Play

Conferences such as Pinter Abroad help to keep Pinter still in play. The Inter-
national Harold Pinter Society’s panels convening on 5 November 2011, at the
Annual Convention of the Midwest Modern Language Association (M/MLA),
in St. Louis, Missouri, built on that convention’s informal theme Play…No Seri-
ously, chosen by the year’s M/MLA President Craig Owens (Drake University),
at the time also secretary of the Pinter Society. Two panels organized by Lance
Norman (Michigan State University) focused specifically on Pinter@Play (Pinter
at Play) and The Comic Pinter. Clearly, at such academic scholarly conferences,
Pinter is still in play in the USA, as well as elsewhere “abroad.”
Through such endeavors as organizing and writing presentations for confer-
ences and performing in, experiencing, and writing about productions, para-
doxically, “not being Harold Pinter” becomes “being Harold Pinter.” Returning
11 In “Master Harold,” a review of books by Robert Gordon and Hanna Skolnicov pub-
lished in 2012, George Hunka observes: “In the years since his death in 2008, the
appeal of Pinter’s plays has shown no signs of abating. Both his early and his late work
are continuously revived around the world, not only in traditional mainstream thea-
tres but also through interpretations shaped by post-dramatic experimental groups,
most famously the Belarus Free Theatre’s Being Harold Pinter, which visited New York
in 2011” (Hunka 2012, 82).
him to life, as it were, we who are not Harold Pinter in real life and who never
could be—that is, never could be the unique genius that Harold Pinter was in so
many areas of life and art—are still able, vicariously, to be Harold Pinter, or at
least to be our own versions of Harold Pinter. We can speak or hear his voice as if
it were our own voice by identifying with his characters as we read or perform his
texts and with actors in the process of experiencing their performances of Pinter.
Despite not being Harold Pinter, we are able to inhabit imaginatively—affectively
and intellectually; through our viscerally felt emotions recollected in tranquility,
thus thoughtfully reconsidered—what, over 40 years ago, Katherine H. Burkman
(1971) called “the dramatic world of Harold Pinter.” Through such strategies,
we may feel that we are “being Harold Pinter”—whether it be “comically” or
“seriously”; or, as is most often the case, both.
Memorializing and paying homage to Pinter in the United States of America,
as elsewhere in the world, has been functioning as a critical strategy for keeping
Pinter’s voice alive both on stage and in our own lives, in ourselves. In October
2011, the 58-page memorial edition of my “Harold Pinter Bibliography,” cover-
ing 25 December 2008 through 31 January 2010, was published in Remembering/
Celebrating Harold Pinter, the 14th volume of The Pinter Review (Merritt 2011c,
220–77). It lists many memorial tributes, related performance events, and publi-
cations honoring Pinter. Such phenomena have been keeping “Pinter still in play
in the USA” and elsewhere around the world—perhaps even more “in play” after
his death than he was while still alive. Celebrations and festivals of productions
of Pinter’s work in the US and distribution and re-distribution of the text and
video recording of his Nobel Lecture “Art, Truth and Politics” enable Pinter still
to “be” alive—still to be in play—on stages and in criticism and also still to exert
a strong influence and impact on political discourse since his death. His multi-
farious creations—his “various voices”—in several genres and formats (drama,
film, poetry, prose fiction, essays, and speeches)—are preserved in audiovisual
and digital media shown at these live events and sometimes captured and up-
loaded to the Internet. Through such media, as we experience and re-experience
Harold Pinter delivering his Nobel Lecture, acting in his plays, reading his own
and others’ poetry, speaking at rallies and before Parliament, or speaking at
the Edinburgh Book Festival and elsewhere, we may feel even closer to “being”
Harold Pinter now than we felt in actuality (“in real life”) before he died.
On 28 December 2008, the day after Natalia Koliada posted her memorial
tribute “Our Friend Harold Pinter” as the Belarus Free Theatre was beginning
its Australian tour of Being Harold Pinter, the Harold Pinter Society convened its
annual session at the Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention
in San Francisco, California. Our topic, announced the previous year, was Pinter’s
Great ’Scapes: Mindscapes, Landscapes, Escapes, and Performance Space. Prior

to introducing the panelists and their papers, Pinter Society President Ann
C. Hall acknowledged how deeply Pinter’s death was affecting us all. We shared
our sadness and our mutual sense of loss, leavened by our many fond memories
of Harold Pinter. Our memorial Harold Pinter Society session occurred exactly
a year later, on 28 December 2009, at the 125th MLA Annual Convention, in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: it was called Remembrance of Pinter Past: Pinter’s
Use of Memory, History, Recollection.12 By then Antonia Fraser had e-mailed me
digital photographs of the engraved light grey headstone permanently installed
in his gravesite at Kensal Green Cemetery, in Northwest London; I shared print-
outs with those assembled.13
On 2 May 2009, PEN American Center sponsored an important public Me-
morial Celebration of Harold Pinter in New York City, organized and curated by
Pinter’s Gaieties cricket teammate and friend, London-based actor and director
Matthew “Harry” Burton. This PEN Tribute to Harold Pinter was part of the Fifth
Annual PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature (PEN American
Center 2009). The program was hosted by The City University of New York
Graduate Center, at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, over the course of a
full day and evening. At Harry Burton’s invitation, I participated in a few of the
panels that he had arranged throughout the day (full program listed in Merritt
2011c, 254–55). Panel participants and members of the audience remembered
Harold Pinter fondly and frequently acknowledged and appreciated his great wit
and humor, as well as his critical and political acumen. Together with the audi-
ence, we laughed a lot. It was by no means a solemn occasion.14 Privately, in the
12 The panel included presentations by Lois G. Gordon, Christopher C. Hudgins, and

Stephen Watt. (William Baker had been scheduled to present but was unable to attend.)
13 During the 2009 Harold Pinter Society MLA session, some expressed surprise that
the day of death engraved on his gravestone is “Christmas Eve, 2008,” replacing
“24th December 2008,” which had appeared on the temporary grave marker. Harold
Pinter identified himself as Jewish, though not as an observant Jew. In July 2008, he
provided instructions for a secular funeral service. The permanent inscription refer-
ring to Christmas Eve was selected by Antonia Fraser, who identifies herself as an
observant Catholic. In her memoir Must You Go? she reveals that, in 1990, although
he was “a determinedly non-believing and non-practising Jew” (189), Harold Pinter
agreed to participate in a formal “ceremony of validation [of their 1980 marriage]—in
a Catholic church” (Fraser 2010, 188–89, 192, 193, 194–95).
14 The evening’s events included a stage performance of Monologue by Henry Woolf,
reprising his role as the Man, and a rehearsed staged reading of The Dumb Waiter,
directed by Harry Burton, in which Jason Isaacs reprised his 2007 Trafalgar Studios
Green Room, where we gathered prior to each event, we all expressed sadness
at our loss of Harold Pinter in real life. But publicly, on stage and in the rooms
where the audiovisual recordings were being shown, participants and audience
members also felt that Pinter was still very much alive, celebrated, and enjoyed
through his works. As a large photograph of Harold Pinter, a still from Burton’s
documentary film Working With Pinter, served as a backdrop throughout all the
panels and presentations, even though we were honoring and paying tribute to
him because of his passing, he seemed omnipresent, both being and not being
Harold Pinter.
On 9 June 2009, I attended the Royal National Theatre’s memorial Celebra-
tion of Harold Pinter, which was staged at the NT’s Olivier Theatre. Antonia
Fraser invited me to visit at her Campden Hill Square home, in London, a few
days later. As we sipped white wine, she mentioned that she had just delivered
the manuscript of her memoir, Must You Go? My Life With Harold Pinter. I asked
her if she would be willing to have an extract or excerpts from the book pub-
lished in the memorial volume of The Pinter Review, whose preparation I had
been discussing with its editor, Frank Gillen. That would be fine, she said, with
two provisos: one, that she not have to select the passages herself, but that Frank
propose a couple of possibilities for her approval; and, two, that the extracts from
her book appear in print in The Pinter Review only after they were published in
her book. After returning home, I conveyed these terms to Frank in a telephone
conversation; he was delighted that neither condition would pose any difficulty,
and thus the extracts that he chose, which I had suggested that he consider as
well, have been published with her permission.
The first edition of Must You Go? was published in hardcover in the UK in Jan-
uary 2010, and the first American hardcover edition was forthcoming early that
November. A few months earlier, I checked Antonia Fraser’s events schedule and
realized that, as part of her North American book tour, she would be interviewed
at the Chicago Humanities Festival on the 6th of November, the very same day
that the Pinter Society would be in Chicago to hold Pinter sessions at the 2010 M/
MLA Annual Convention. During her Festival interview, I would be presenting a
paper called “Romantic Pinter” (Merritt 2010b [with Romantic “under erasure” in
the manner of Jacques Derrida]). I suggested to Pinter Society President Ann Hall
performance as Ben, this time opposite Brían F. O’Byrne as Gus. There were also read-
ings of some of Pinter’s poems and prose works published in the collection Various
Voices by Harry Burton, Henry Woolf, and Eve Best (who had performed Ruth in
Daniel Sullivan’s 40th anniversary Broadway production of The Homecoming, at the
Cort Theatre, in 2007–2008).
that Lady Antonia might be receptive to an invitation to join us at some time that
did not conflict with her prior engagement. As the Fall 2010 International Harold
Pinter Society Newsletter reports and illustrates with photographs, she accepted
our invitation to attend the M/MLA’s cocktail reception. Seated at a table set up
especially for her, she signed books for Pinter Society members and other con-
ventioneers, cordially chatting with each one. We were thrilled to have her join
us in Chicago, and she was equally thrilled to sell so many copies of her book.
Throughout the evening, she reminisced about her life with Harold Pinter. As in
Must You Go? he came alive again through her accounts.
In addition to presenting many readings from Must You Go? at a variety of
venues, mostly in the UK, but also in North America, Antonia Fraser ensures
that Pinter will “never be forgotten” when she presides at other events relating to
Pinter’s interests, such as the awarding of the PEN Pinter Prize. “Founded in 2009
by the freedom-of-expression writers’ group English PEN in Pinter’s memory,”
as reported by the Guardian, “the prize is awarded annually to a British writer
or writer resident in Britain who, in the words of Pinter’s Nobel literature prize
speech in 2005 [quoted above], casts an ‘unflinching, unswerving’ gaze upon the
world and shows a ‘fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of
our lives and our societies’” (Staff and agencies 2013).15
From 22 July through 22 August 2010, the Pittsburgh Irish and Classical
Theatre (PICT) hosted a Harold Pinter Festival called Hearing the Noise in the
Silence: A Celebration of the Life and Theatre of Harold Pinter (full program
listed in Merritt 2011c, 250–51). Over its last weekend, I saw performances of
each Pinter play in the repertory, which included new productions of The Room,
The Hothouse, The Dumb Waiter, No Man’s Land, and Betrayal, and the Finale of
readings of Pinter’s poetry and prose. These were fine productions, competently
15 Lady Antonia Fraser announced that Sir David Hare won the 2011 PEN Pinter Prize
in August 2011. At the British Library on 10 October 2011, which would have been
Pinter’s 81st birthday, when Hare received his PEN Pinter Prize, he announced that
Roberto Saviano had won the companion International Writer of Courage Award
(Flood 2011), selected by English PEN’s Writers at Risk Committee in association
with the Pinter Prize winner. In 2012 the PEN Pinter Prize was presented to Carol
Ann Duffy, and Samar Yazbek was selected as the International Writer of Courage.
On 30 July 2013, it was announced that Sir Tom Stoppard was awarded the PEN
Pinter Prize for 2013; Stoppard will announce the winner of the International Writer
of Courage Award at the British Library on 7 October, when they receive their awards
(Staff and agencies 2013; cf. Billington 2013). See periodically updated webpage for
the PEN Pinter Prize (http://www.englishpen.org/prizes/pen-pinter-prize/).
directed, with high-quality acting, attended by a very receptive local audience.

I enjoyed most particularly PICT’s production of Celebration, effectively guest
directed by Alan Stanford, an associate director at the Gate Theatre, in Dublin,
and a frequent guest director at PICT subsequently named its artistic director.
Stanford had coordinated and directed the celebration of readings from Pinter’s
plays, prose, and poetry performed in Pinter’s honor by Charles Dance, Sir
Michael Gambon, Jeremy Irons, and Penelope Wilton as part of the program of
the 10th Europe Theatre Prize, which Pinter received in Turin, in March 2006.
Stanford’s production at PICT approached the mark set by Pinter’s own 2000
UK première of Celebration at the Almeida, which had transferred to New York’s
Lincoln Center Pinter Festival in July 2001.
Being Harold Pinter: Back in the USA and the UK

The Under the Radar Festival New York première performances of Being Har-
old Pinter in January 2011 at La MaMa (Shcherban 2011c) all sold out. The Bela-
rus Free Theatre added a couple of extra performances, which also sold out, and
also added two matinee performances of Zone of Silence. The run ended with
another sold-out, one-night-only benefit encore performance of Being Harold
Pinter co-hosted by Tom Stoppard and the American playwright Tony Kushner
at the Public Theater on 17 January. That night the Free Theatre troupe was
joined by guest artists who read the Belarus prisoners’ testimonies, including:
Mandy Patinkin, Kevin Kline, Olympia Dukakis, Lily Rabe, Linda Emond, Josh
Hamilton, Stephen Spinella, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, and Philip Seymour
Hoffman. Kushner said: “It was the best Pinter I have ever seen. It blew me
away” (quoted in Jones 2011a). On 19 January 2011, the previously scheduled
eve of their return to Belarus, there was another sold-out benefit for them, Viva
the Belarus Free Theatre, an evening of literary readings and dramatic and
musical performances, held at Le Poisson Rouge, chaired by Tom Stoppard for
PEN American Center.16 Among the literary presentations was a reading of a
chillingly-witty new one-act anti-torture play written by Stoppard, called Rules
of War, performed by American actors Billy Crudup and Margaret Colin, with
16 Viva the Belarus Free Theater is described by PEN American Center [2011] as follows:
“The Belarus Free Theater joins internationally-acclaimed playwright Tom Stoppard,
PEN American Center, and a stellar supporting cast for an evening celebrating artistic
freedom and the courage of hundreds of writers, artists, journalists, and intellectuals
targeted in Lukashenko’s latest crackdown following the nation’s flawed December
elections.”
stage directions read by Stoppard; extracts from Zone of Silence and other read-
ings by members of the Free Theatre; and readings from their own works by
Don DeLillo and E. L. Doctorow. The benefits raised $25,000 for the troupe from
Belarus. At noon on 19 January, the Public Theatre and Amnesty International
USA staged a large Rally for the Belarus Free Theatre, down the street from the
Permanent Mission of the Republic of Belarus to the United Nations. It was led
by Tony Kushner, the Public Theatre’s Artistic Director Oskar Eustis, Under the
Radar producer Mark Russell, and actor Mandy Patinkin.17
After the opening of Being Harold Pinter in New York, Koliada, “who has
the best command of English among troupe members,” traveled to Washington,
DC, to meet with “Congressional staff members … and State Department
officials about the worsening situation in Belarus” (Rohter 2011). She met with
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who reportedly pledged US support for UN
sanctions against Belarus. But, as Koliada explained later (2011), after every visit
she made to Washington, DC, relatives and friends of the Belarus Free Theatre
would be harassed and the troupe would receive threats of future repercussions
in Belarus. They could not return to Belarus safely after their New York engage-
ment and were, in effect, homeless. They were rescued by an invitation for a
month-long residency in Chicago, from 27 January through 20 February. They
performed Being Harold Pinter hosted by the Goodman Theatre in association
with Northwestern University, the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, and the League
of Chicago Theatres at various venues in the Chicago area (Shcherban 2011b;
cf. Hetrick 2011).
Simultaneously, throughout January and February 2011, in solidarity with
the Belarus Free Theatre and in support of the Free Belarus Now campaign,
American theater companies and college and university theater communities
across the United States organized dramatic readings and stage performances
of Being Harold Pinter and coordinated additional benefits for them. Many
of these events throughout the US were organized by using Internet sites like
Free Belarus Now and Charter ’97 and interactive social media like Facebook,
Twitter, and local blogs. A list of upcoming venues published on 19 January in
the Huffington Post (Gunderson 2011) includes: the Single Carrot Theatre, in
Baltimore, Maryland, and Theatre J in Washington, DC (17 Jan.); the Irving
Community Theatre, in Irving, Texas (21 Jan.); the University of Wisconsin’s
UT Hemsley Theatre, in Madison, Wisconsin (27 Jan.); the Bricolage Theater,
17 Photographs of the Rally for the Belarus Free Theatre have been posted on Charter97.
com, Broadwayworld.com, and other news sites.
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (31 Jan.); and ZSpace in San Francisco, California

(8 Feb.). Readings of Being Harold Pinter had already taken place at Portland
Center Stage, in Portland, Oregon; The Rudyard Kipling in Louisville, Kentucky;
Skewed Visions Studio in Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Nautilus Music-Theatre
in Minneapolis/St. Paul (Gunderson 2011). An additional “performed reading”
occurred on 25 February, as part of the Global Theatre Project (2011) at the Los
Angeles Theatre Center, in Los Angeles, California.
When their residence in Chicago ended, on 20 February 2011, the Belarus
Free Theatre left the United States, to perform Being Harold Pinter, along with
A Flower for Pina Bausch, at the 39th Hong Kong Arts Festival (with English and
Chinese surtitles), from 17 February to 27 March (Pordes 2011). Then they re-
turned to London. On 28 March 2011, in a joint action coordinated by the Belarus
Free Theatre, the Almeida Theatre, the Old Vic Theatre, the British human rights
organization Index on Censorship, and Charter ’97, Nikolai Khalezin and Jude
Law performed readings from Khalezin’s Free Theatre play Generation Jeans (in
English translation) before the Second Chamber of Parliament, sponsored by the
Index on Censorship. Having seen their production of Being Harold Pinter at La
MaMa that January, the Old Vic’s Artistic Director Kevin Spacey gave the Belarus
Free Theatre access to its rehearsal rooms.18 Law, Spacey, and Stoppard all pick-
eted along with other members of the London theater community in front of the
Grayling Offices. According to Khalezin (2011), they succeeded in meeting their
“goals … to attract attention to British businesses which actively cooperate with
the Lukashenko regime and to initiate hearings in the British Parliament.”19
18 According to Nikolai Khalezin, in an interview of 31 March 2011, including photos

from both the performance and the rally, they “did well: unbelievable ovations. ‘Bravo’
shouts, incredible reviews. A journalist from the ‘Evening Standard’ said: ‘If Michael
Billington rated this performance five stars in “The Guardian”, I would rate it six!’”
(Khalezin and Charter ’97 staff 2011).
19 Khalezin (2011) summed up the “results of the action held”:
First and foremost is that we inform the world about the Belarusian political prisoners,
who are kept in prisons under the trumped-up cases [charges]. Second, we triggered
the British media interest in Belarus. All leading editorials without exceptions start-
ed to write about our country. Great Britain is the second country after the United
States, where we managed to initiate this process. Third, we succeeded in making
media and society focus on the cooperation issues between representatives of British
business and Lukashenko regime. And fourth, Ed Miliband, a Parliament opposi-
tion leader, attended the performance and assured us that his party would initiate
parliament[ary] hearings regarding Belarus.
On 12 April 2011, jointly hosted by the Public Theater and La Mama ETC, the
Belarus Free Theatre was back in New York City to begin a “triumphant” encore
engagement of forty performances in the Ellen Stewart Theatre, with a trilogy
consisting of Being Harold Pinter, Zone of Silence, and Discover Love (Shcherban
2011a). Once again they became “the talk of the town.” In his “Theater Talk-
back: When Political Theater Feels Truly Dangerous,” of 12 January 2011, Ben
Brantley (2011d) had already described feeling sudden “icy shafts … when I’d
think that the Belarus Free Theatre had truly experienced what Harold Pinter had
created through imagination, extrapolation and empathy—that this company was
reflecting Pinter’s scenes back to us as a harsh living mirror. A group of plays had
been wrenched from the intellectual ether and organically, immediately linked
to the world of its performance.” Brantley speculated that “most Americans,
for whom plays are largely thought of (if they are at all) as an occasional diver-
sion,” and who live in a democracy where they enjoy freedoms denied citizens of
Belarus, would find “The idea of theater as an act (and an instrument) of politi-
cal defiance” to be “strange.” He recalled, “I marveled at the bravery and urgency
of ‘Being Harold Pinter’,” and, though he listed some precedents in theater his-
tory before his time—e.g., Brecht in Germany and Odets in America—he was
unable to “think of when, if ever, I’d experienced it [such bravery and urgency] to
the same degree elsewhere.” Directly addressing his audience, he concluded: “So
I’m asking you if you can remember instances—at home or abroad—of topical
theater that seemed so disturbingly of the moment that it was truly dangerous
and heroic.”20
In “Cry Freedom,” Koliada (2011) refers to the Free Belarus Now campaign co-founded
by Tom Stoppard and their London-based Czech friend Irina Bogdanova, who had
introduced members of the Belarus Free Theatre to the former Czech President
Václav Havel (1930–2011). Havel and Stoppard became the Free Theatre’s “patrons”
and “curators” as well as “friends.” The support of Havel, Stoppard, and Pinter was
instrumental in the Belarus Free Theatre’s receiving full membership in the European
Theatre Convention in April 2007 and the troupe’s being invited to perform at the
12th Edition of the Europe Theatre Prize, in Thessaloniki, Greece, 10–13 Apr. 2008,
where the Belarus Free Theatre received Special Mention (See http://www.premio-
europa.org/open_page.php?id=43).
20 In “The Belarus Free Theatre’s Chicago Debut,” Jonathan Abarbanel (2011) observes:
“Those of us making theater in the United States like to believe in our courage to raise
important social, ethical, moral and/or political issues in the works we created and
present. But none of us—no, not one of us—really put[s] our asses on the line every
time the curtain goes up. The Belarus Free Theatre does, persevering in a country
where theater as an outlet for political thought still is feared by a bully government.”
On the occasion of the Belarus Free Theatre’s encore at La MaMa, in his later
account of 18 April 2011, Brantley (2011a) adds retrospectively:
Those who at that time saw this troupe’s production of “Being Harold Pinter,” which
traces themes of institutionalized violence in Pinter’s work, might have been motivated
by feelings of political righteousness. But what they saw was a work not just of cou-
rageous politics but also of dynamic and invigorating theatrical craftsmanship. The
content of that production at La MaMa was devastating; its form blazed with the hope
that comes from a deep, resourceful and unextinguishable creativity.
At the end of August 2011, the Free Theatre completed its first engagement
at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where its production of Vladimir Shcherban’s
work, A Reply to Kathy Acker: Minsk 2011, won The Scotsman Fringe First Award
(Edinburgh Fringe 2011). That May, in New York, the Village Voice (2011) had
given the Belarus Free Theatre an Obie, the $1,000 Ross Wetzsteon Award. Koliada
reflected on such American laurels in an interview published on 21 August 2011
in Edinburgh:
It was a great honour for us, but we couldn’t enjoy it…. We received a fantastic review by
Ben Brantley in the New York Times, we had a wonderful audience, [and] a waiting list
of people coming to see it, but every day, when you get the news that one of your friends
is dying, another friend is tortured, your parents’ apartment is raided by the KGB, there
is an attempt to kidnap your brother-in-law in order to get your husband back to the
country … you cannot get the joy. (quoted in Fisher 2011)
“Increasingly,” it is clear, “the only safe place to perform” for the Free Thea-
tre of Belarus is outside Belarus (Fisher 2011); that is, from their perspective,
abroad. Koliada fears that they would be arrested and imprisoned by the KGB the
moment they returned. Resolved to stay “alive,” they work to free Belarus from
the outside: “We are alive when we perform and we perform if we are alive…. We
wait for this moment when there is a chance to start a production of a new piece.
We continue to say what we want to say and it doesn’t really matter whether we
do it underground or in Edinburgh.”
Of course, for the last seven years of his life, just staying alive—“being Harold
Pinter”—had become his own number one priority. He knew that once his
own life ended, others would have to take over for him. The line that Harold
Pinter told Gussow (1994) he considered “one of the most important” he had
“ever written” (71)—Petey’s telling Stanley in The Birthday Party (1957), “Stan,
don’t let them tell you what to do!” (Pinter 1961, 86)—anticipated the advice of
another patron of the Belarus Free Theatre, the former Czech President and dis-
sident playwright Václav Havel, recalled by Koliada prior to the Free Theatre’s
2009 Australian tour: “You should talk very loudly and openly in order to stop
the dictatorship. If you stay silent you will prolong the dictatorship” (quoted in
E. Blake 2008). Koliada added: “We cannot live like this any longer. Our parents
are dying and will not live to see a free Belarus. All of the performers have chil-
dren and we want them to live in freedom. That is all we want for our theatre”
(quoted in E. Blake 2008).
After the Soho Theatre Gala of Being Harold Pinter on 20 February 2008,
Harold Pinter had expressed his feeling of pride in how the Belarus Free Theatre
brought such “emotional” purpose to his work. If Harold Pinter were still living
today, he might feel even more proud of what an enormous international im-
pact the troupe has had in repurposing his work abroad. As a result of the Free
Theatre’s productions throughout the United States and Europe, there has been
greater pressure on the Lukashenko regime to give the citizens of Belarus greater
political and cultural freedom. Though that has not happened yet, Pinter would
urge, “Let’s keep fighting” (quoted in Billington 2007a, 395–430).
In December 2011, the Belarus Free Theatre began a fund-raising drive, using
Sponsume.com (2011) to enlist financial support for an office to serve as its base
in London. In an e-mail message (13 Jan. 2012), the Free Theatre announced that
it had surpassed its target of £9,000, raising a total of £9,250. From this new office
in London and through affiliation with the Young Vic Theatre, it is able to “keep
fighting” to free Belarus from oppression.21
Extending the Reach and Influence, the Power of Pinter

In 2005, when Pinter was too weak-voiced from illness to perform a reading
of his poems at a pre-arranged church benefit for a women’s shelter in London,
he asked the Yorkshire-born Hollywood actor Julian Sands to step in for him,
provided that they met first to discuss and to rehearse the readings. While Sands
reportedly found that time he shared with Pinter “rich and fascinating,” he de-
scribed “the performance differently” (Julian 2011): “Harold ended up in the
front row mouthing the stuff along. It was intended to be encouraging but it
was the most intimidating thing I have ever had to contend with!” (quoted in
Julian 2011). Afterward, Sands performed readings from Pinter’s poetry at other
21 Cf. Natalia Koliada’s Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/belfreetheatre. For related news

archives, see Belarus Free Theatre at http://www.dramaturg.org and the Office for
a Democratic Belarus, Brussels, at http://democraticbelarus.eu/. For cross-posted
appeals and petitions, such as Stop Human Rights Violations in Belarus (hosted by
change.org in June/July 2013), see Free Belarus Now: No Human Should Be Without
Rights, at http://www.freebelarusnow.org/.
fundraisers, including some in Los Angeles (Stoudt 2009; C. Hall 2011). Under
the direction of John Malkovich, Sands built his readings and various anecdotes
about Pinter into a one-man tribute initially called Julian Sands in Celebration of
Harold Pinter, which “draws from Pinter’s poetry and political writings, as well
as Sands’ own relationship with the playwright” (Ng 2012). After they “rehearsed
this thing in London, Vienna, [and] Los Angeles,” they premiered it at the Edin-
burgh Festival Fringe from 4 through 21 August 2011, and an expanded version,
renamed A Celebration of Harold Pinter, toured the UK (Julian 2011), prior to
several other performances in the US and Europe.22 Reviewing A Celebration
of Harold Pinter at the Irish Repertory Theatre, Ben Brantley (2012) concludes
that, from having worked with Pinter so directly, Sands “learned his part well”:
“Mr. Sands … has assumed the voice of Harold Pinter…. when he reads Pinter’s
poems, as well as the odd prose piece, you feel the playwright’s presence.” In
performing his Celebration of Harold Pinter throughout the United States and
elsewhere, Julian Sands has thus been extending the reach and influence, the
power of “Pinter’s voice” (á la Sands) to some new audiences.
Beginning in 2009, as the Belarus Free Theatre was crisscrossing continents
and oceans to perform Being Harold Pinter and other works in Europe, Scandi-
navia, Australia, Asia, and the United States, and as Julian Sands was “voicing
Pinter” in the US and Europe, Frank Corrado became deeply engaged in pro-
ducing Pinter in Seattle, Washington. A former English major who trained at
the Iowa Writers Workshop as a playwright and became a professional actor and
director, Corrado has lived in Seattle for decades, loves Harold Pinter’s work,
and considers Pinter his favorite writer. As a tribute to Pinter after his death, he
enlisted some of his colleagues at ACT: A Contemporary Theatre and used its
Creative Lab events format in developing Pinter Fortnightly, a series of dramatic
22 Sands performed A Celebration of Harold Pinter again at the Odyssey Theatre En-
semble, in Los Angeles, from 8 through 22 January 2012 (Ng 2012; Morris 2012), at
the Royce Gallery in San Francisco, on 18 and 19 May 2012 (Sands 2012b; Hodges
2012), and, back in the UK, at the Wharfeside Theatre, Ilkley Playhouse, Ilkley, West
Yorkshire, on 25 August 2012. He performed his “homage” to Pinter at the Yale
Center for British Art, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, on 27 September
2012, prior to a longer engagement at the Irish Repertory Theatre, in New York City,
from 10 October through 4 November 2012 (Sands 2012b); and at various venues
in the Los Angeles area again in 2012–13 (Sands 2012c; 2012d). Sands performed
his Pinter Celebration on stage at the 48th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival,
in the Czech Republic, on 1 July 2013 (Guest detail 2013). He has scheduled at least
another performance at Broad Stage, in Santa Monica, California, on 26 October
2013 (Ng 2013).
readings and some rehearsed productions—mostly of Pinter’s work and some-

times including work by other “challenging” and “innovative” writers, such as
J. T. Rogers (Madagascar), Doug Lucie (Grace), and Alan Bennett (Bed Among
the Lentils).23 Pinter Fortnightly grew and flourished over the next few years.
For the 2012 Annual Convention of the Modern Language Association
(MLA), held in Seattle, Washington, from 5 through 8 January, on behalf of the
International Harold Pinter Society (an Allied Organization), I proposed and
organized a session on Pinter in Seattle: A Creative Conversation with Frank
Corrado and Harry Burton, which occurred on 7 January (Merritt 2012b). Open
to the public, it was also listed in the brochure for sessions selected by MLA Pres-
ident Russell A. Berman relating to his Presidential Theme: Language, Literature,
Learning. As I noticed in my introduction to Pinter in Seattle, for 2010–2012
Frank Corrado was awarded a Fox Family Foundation Fellowship administered
by Theatre Communication Group (TCG). It included grants of $25,000 to him
for further development of Pinter Fortnightly at ACT and $7,500 to ACT for
producing a full-building Harold Pinter Festival. ACT (2012) announced that
the Pinter Festival would occur from 20 July to 26 August 2012, including stage
productions of The Dumb Waiter and Celebration (in a double bill), Old Times,
and No Man’s Land, and featuring invited guest directors, a company of Equity
actors, film screenings, readings of some of Pinter’s one-act plays, and related
events (cf. Corrado 2011).
After the MLA Convention, for the evening of 9 January 2012, as Corrado
arranged, Harry Burton showed his documentary film Working With Pinter in
the Bullitt Cabaret at ACT, and Henry Woolf joined in a post-screening con-
versation with them. Woolf and Burton then regaled the full house with their
reminiscences about Harold Pinter, and, as Max and Lenny, they also performed
a reading from the opening scene of The Homecoming to great appreciation from
the audience. Their interactions were so entertaining and informative that for
the summer 2012 Pinter Festival Corrado incorporated screenings of Working
With Pinter, a workshop on acting in Pinter (“Enjoying Playing Pinter”), by
Henry Woolf, Woolf ’s stage performance of Monologue (Pinter 1973), and other
special events featuring Woolf.24
23 In 2009, along with two other Seattle actors, Victor Pappas and Suzanne Bouchard,
Frank Corrado also co-founded Shadow and Light Theatre (listed in Merritt 2011c,
259–60). Corrado’s involvement in Shadow and Light Theatre ended in 2010, and he
concentrated on developing his Pinter Fortnightly series (252–53).
24 From 23 through 27 August 2012, I returned to Seattle for the final week of ACT’s
Pinter Festival so that I could experience all its productions, which I thoroughly
Before we first met in Seattle, in a telephone conversation, I asked Frank Corrado

how he might sum up his experience of doing Pinter Fortnightly from its begin-
nings in 2009. He responded:
It’s always been very much in the nature of a literary adventure and also an exercise in
how much an audience can take … and I’ve invariably been both surprised and gratified
that the adventure has been well received by a growing audience. I now have a very loyal
and consistent audience—about 170 people each time—most of who are constituents
who keep coming back. The more challenging the material, the greater the concentra-
tion in the room, which is absolutely thrilling for someone who’s done theater as long as
I have done [40 years] and seen lots of audiences. I’ve seen audiences who couldn’t care
less what’s going on and are restive and don’t want to be there. But I’ve isolated a group
of people who have learned the Pinter language, which is to say are able to embrace and
to endure the ambiguity and ambivalence and contradiction and not just intellectually,
but the emotional ambivalence and the emotional contradiction of the plays.
In February 2011, the Shakespeare Theatre Company, in Washington, DC,

which was developing its first production of a Pinter play, Old Times, commis-
sioned me to contribute two articles on the play: a brief “scholarly article” for its
2010–2011 Season Guide sent to its subscribers, which I called “‘The Memory of
all that’: Presence and Prescience of the Past in Old Times” (Merritt 2010a); and
an even briefer, “critical article” for its publication Asides, entitled “The Mistiness
of the Past” (Merritt 2011a). This production of Old Times was very successful.
Reviewers and other audience members seemed to recognize the value of the
kinds of intellectual and emotional challenges that Pinter’s plays provide summed
up so eloquently in Frank Corrado’s account of the Pinter Fortnightly “adventure.”
In March 2011, the American Conservatory Theatre (A.C.T.), in San Francisco,
whose artistic director is Carey Perloff, presented a memorial celebration of
Harold Pinter centering on its first production of The Homecoming. Perloff di-
rected The Birthday Party in 1988 and the 1989 New York première of Mountain
Language, in a double bill with a reprise of The Birthday Party, at CSC (Classic
Stage Company) Repertory Theater before she moved to San Francisco’s A.C.T.,
where, in 2001, she directed the West Coast première of Celebration. As she has
explained in her memorial tribute published in American Theatre (Perloff 2009;
cf. Perloff 2008) and online (A.C.T. 2011), Perloff feels a strong personal and
professional connection to Pinter and his work, as do so many other theater pro-
fessionals and academic scholars and critics. We all relish our involvement in the
“adventure” keeping Pinter “still in play.”
enjoyed. The Festival received enthusiastic reviews and its programs were “all well
attended” (Berson 2013, 74–75).
The process of “being Harold Pinter” includes “pursuing Pinter.”25 Pursu-

ing Pinter appears to be as “endless” as his works are “timeless.”26 The pursuit
of “understanding Harold Pinter”—that is, understanding Pinter’s life and work
and how and why it affects readers and audiences— continues apace through-
out the United States, as it does elsewhere in the world (Cf. R. Gordon 2012;
Scolnicov 2012). At the 2012 MLA Annual Convention in Seattle, the formal
paper-giving session of the Pinter Society (organized by Judith Roof) focused
on the topic Pinter’s Voice. The paper that I presented in that session (Merritt
2012a) is called “Pinter’s Voices” (plural). Pinter (2009) kept the title of the
posthumously-published updated Faber and Faber collection Various Voices and
called his dramatic/musical collaboration with composer James Clarke Voices
(Pinter and Clarke 2005). Pinter and his characters, “being and not being Harold
Pinter,” speak for all of us, with far more than the single “voice” of anyone, no
matter how unique, even Pinter. If, as Billington (2007b) suggests in “The Im-
portance of Being Pinter,” the “resonance” of Pinter’s various voices is “universal,”
they will survive, “outlive,” us all.
Conclusion: Keeping Hope Alive—Pinter Still in Play…

The reach and the influence of Harold Pinter—already vast before his death—
are now perhaps immeasurable. Through the efforts of the Belarus Free Theatre
to free their country, with the cooperation of many other theater companies and
sponsors, Being Harold Pinter has been inspiring those involved in “not being
Harold Pinter” throughout the Americas, Australia, Europe, Africa, and Asia;
such inspiration may extend even further “abroad,” spanning and connecting
many “other stages,” many “other rooms,” throughout the world.
From 28 October to 6 November 2011, a group of British actors led by Andy
de la Tour and Roger Lloyd-Pack brought “a selection of Pinter’s works to Cuba
for the first time,” after previewing the program “at The Print Room in London’s
Bayswater … before the ensemble perform[ed] it at the Fourteenth International
Havana Theatre Festival … in memory of Pinter’s solidarity with Cuba” (Stone
2011). “A small study tour to enjoy the Festival” was advertised for the hefty sum
25 See “Pursuing Pinter” (Merritt 2009 [2007]) and “Pursuing Pinter …” (Merritt 2011b).
Cf. Pursuing Pinter: A Celebration (A.C.T. 2011).
26 For related perspectives on “endlessness” and “timelessness” relating to Pinter, see
Renton 2011 [2007]. Cf. Merritt 2004, 2008, 2009 [2007], 2010, 2011a, and 2011b.
On “the miraculous trace” of the now dead “author’s voice,” see Gallop 2011, 20–26;
32–33; and 147 nn. 22–23.
of £1,352 per person (Cuba Solidarity Campaign 2011). As these performances of

Pinter’s works have inspired audiences of Cubans and their international guests
who could afford to go (and meet Cuba’s strict travel restrictions), who knows
where else Pinter’s work might turn up and whom or what it might inspire next?
Watch out, Antarctica! Pinter may be coming to your icebound research
facility soon. Whether through Being Harold Pinter—repurposed Pinter—or
Pinter in other purposeful modalities, experiencing Pinter might be a welcome
diversion for international consortia of scientists doing research on the truly
alarming effects of global warming. Harold Pinter still empowers “unflinching,
unswerving, fierce intellectual determination” to define and to put into action true
“political vision” (2005, 23–24). As such vision embodies “the real truth of our lives
and our societies,” it can lead to actual solutions to our problems, ways of acting
upon such truths, including economic and environmental ones. Being and not
being Harold Pinter could help to save both the world economy and our planet—
and the people striving to live on it in peace and harmony. Pursuing Pinter, we
aim to restore human dignity and to preserve the dignity of human life for future
generations. As Ruth says in The Homecoming, “the fact” that our “lips move” (that
we are living physical beings) “is more significant … than the words which come
through them.” We “must bear that … possibility … in mind” (Pinter 1965, 53).
Yet, as Pinter (2005) says in “Art, Truth and Politics,” “there never is any such thing
as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many” (5). Pinter’s words may
be “more significant” than “the fact” that his “lips” moved uttering them.
Instead of fretting as Rose does in The Room (1957) that “It’s murder” outside
(Pinter 1961, 91) and becoming “blind” to our problems inside—to “the real truth
of our lives and our societies”—we must honor “quite a big streak of optimism”
that Pinter insisted he had, despite being “often called a pessimist” (quoted in
Merritt 2008, 156–57). We must recognize, celebrate, and maintain the “hope”
that kept Harold Pinter alive, writing and speaking out against corrupt power
and for the powerless to the end of his life. As Pinter said, echoing Beckett: “One
has to live with that hope. And, you know, on we go” (157).
Unfortunately, in reality, we “must go on” without the man Harold Pinter.
Fortunately, on stages and screens and pages across the United States and in the
rest of the world, the power of Harold Pinter—billed as “the most influential
dramatist of his generation” (New York Times 2013)—still goes on. Through
performances, readings, discussions, and various media, throughout real spaces
and virtual space, in audiences and readers of diverse origins and interests, the
hope that Pinter embodied in his work still survives. “That hope” is still alive,
even though Harold Pinter has died. “Apart from that,” in so many ways, Pinter
is still in play in the USA and elsewhere around the world.
In March 2012, Pinterest, an interactive online “pinboard” for visual content

launched in Silicon Valley in 2010, became “the third most popular social media
site in the United States, behind Facebook and Twitter” (Friedlander 2012),
engaging over two million active users (Helfand 2012). Not “named after” Harold
Pinter (as often mistaken), Pinterest is actually a clever portmanteau or blending
of pin and interest.27 Still, the nominal link strengthens its cachet, endowing it
with “the power of Pinter”—with the prestige of Pinter’s reputation. It has created
opportunities for inventive wordplay pertaining to Pinter’s “being” and his “body”
of work: a rich Internet resource of Pinter-related images (photographs, draw-
ings, book covers, programs, posters, quotations, captured stills, videos, etc.).28
27 According to an online entry in the Evening Standard’s “Londoner’s Diary,” called

“Lady Antonia’s Pinteresque Pauses,” “Lady Antonia Fraser … is delighted to discover
a website called Pinterest.com, where you post things you love or which interest you.
There is even a suggestion that it could have been named after her late husband Harold
Pinter. ‘I’ve heard of it, but I haven’t actually looked at it because I can’t get it on my
BlackBerry,’ she says, ‘I cheer it on because I encourage anything called Pinter. It’s
rather nice’” (Standard Blog 2012, italics added). In fact, Pinterest is not intended as an
homage to Harold Pinter, or to highlight “Pinteresque pauses,” as suggested. Taking
her reply out of context, another blog post in the Mail Online alters the Standard’s
quotation and implies that Pinterest is “named after” Pinter: “Lady Antonia Pinter,
DBE, says she likes the Pinterest.com website, named after her late husband, play-
wright Harold Pinter: ‘I cheer it on – I encourage anything called Pinter’” (Hardcastle
2012; italics added). Comments were “closed” after two tried to set the record straight:
“Pinterest is so named because its interface allows users to ‘Pin’ things which interest
them to their profiles. It has as much to do with Harold Pinter as Tumbler has to do
with Mr. Tumnus”; “pinterest is named after the fact that it is Pins that are interest-
ing….I don’t think Harold has anything to do with it!” Yet, the apocryphal account
still intact in the main post has circulated widely, albeit with some skepticism (e.g.,
Neal 2012), while others swiftly debunked it (e.g., Gibbs 2012; cf. Helfand 2012).
28 See, e.g., the metatheatricality of “Harold Pinterest,” posted by the Mary Arrchie The-
atre: “A Chicago Storefront Theatre Company since 1986” at http://pinterest.com/
maryarrchie/harold-pinterest/ and “Pinter Pinterest”, posted by Seattle’s ACT Theatre
at http://pinterest.com/acttheatre/pinter-pinterest/, playing on Pinteresque and high-
lighting Pinter’s pauses. Other “Harold Pinter” or “Pinter”-related boards on Pinterest
turn up via its search facility, accumulating zero to hundreds of such pins, posted by
diverse individuals, including playwrights and other authors, actors, directors, pro-
ducers, publicists, librarians, and publishers, sharing/promoting interests in Pinter’s
life and work. Some invent new puns on Pinter: e.g., hyphenated compound nouns
and verbs, such as “Pinter-est” [Pinter + est (in French)], or “Pinter is”; “declined”
comparative degrees of adjectives, such as “Pinter, Pinterer, Pinterest” [positive, com-
parative, superlative], or “Pinter, more Pinter, most Pinter.”
Pinterest, “Harold Pinter-Quotes” on Twitter, other Twitter feeds, Facebook

pages, online videos, websites, and other Internet resources about and dedicated
to Pinter, including his official site HaroldPinter.org, the Pinter Society’s, and my
own “Harold Pinter Bibliography” webpage—all serve to keep “Harold Pinter”
alive, virtually. They have become virtual strategies keeping Pinter still in play.
The irony seems paradoxically “Pinterific” (Pinter + terrific) and “Pinterifying”
(Pinter + terrifying). Such neologisms may seem silly, as “meaningless” as Pinter
himself deemed Pinteresque (Wark 2006). Ubiquitous both in print and online,
Pinteresque and the Pinter pause do form a dubious legacy, and many social media
often appear, in the words of Betty White on Saturday Night Live (2010), “a huge
waste of time.” But, as Vladimir says, in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, “How time
flies when one has fun!” Such virtual phenomena still convey how much Pinter
and his work are relished and enjoyed by the general public, as well as revered and
missed by his theatrical and academic cohorts. Converted into yet undiscovered
media for posterity, new technologies could extend Harold Pinter’s cultural life
indefinitely. “And, you know, on we go.”
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–, 2011. Cry Freedom: How Theatre Helps Us Fight for Human Rights in Bela-
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theatreblog/2011/apr/04/belarus-free-theatre-speech-human-rights. (“After
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Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. 2011. Save the Date: Fall 2011 Prelude Festival,
October 12–24, 2011. E-mail to author. 15 Sept.
Merritt, S. H. 1995. Pinter in Play: Critical Strategies and the Plays of Harold Pint-
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(2009): 151–70. Special thematic issue dedicated to Harold Pinter. Chief Ed.,
D. Bošković. Co-Ed. R. Nastić. (Rev. version of paper presented in Leeds in
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–, 2010a. “The memory of all that”: Presence and Prescience of the Past in
Old Times. In Shakespeare Theatre Company Guide to the Season’s Plays:
2010–2011 Season, 43–47. Washington, DC: Shakespeare Theatre Company.
–, 2010b. “Romantic Pinter.” Session B: Pinter’s Relationships. A program ar-
ranged by the International Harold Pinter Society at the M/MLA Annual
Convention, 6 Nov., Chicago, IL.
–, 2011a. The Mistiness of the Past. In Asides: A Publication of the Shakespeare
Theatre Company, 4–8. Washington, DC: Shakespeare Theatre Company.
Shakespearetheatre.org, 2011.
–, 2011b. Pursuing Pinter … In Remembering/Celebrating Harold Pinter, ed.
F. Gillen, 57–78. See Gillen 2011. (Rev. & updated version of Merritt 2009
[2007].)
–, 2012a. Pinter’s Voices. Paper presented at Pinter’s Voice (Session 44). A pro-
gram arranged by the International Harold Pinter Society at the MLA Annual
Convention, 5 Jan., Seattle, WA. See Pinter and Clarke 2005.
–, comp. 2011c. Harold Pinter Bibliography: 25 December 2008–31 January
2010. In Remembering/Celebrating Harold Pinter, ed. F. Gillen, 220–77. See
Gillen 2011.
–, organizer and presider. 2012b. Pinter in Seattle: A Creative Conversation with
Frank Corrado and Harry Burton (Session 567). A program arranged by the
International Harold Pinter Society at the MLA Annual Convention, 7 Jan.,
Seattle, WA.
Morris, S. L. 2012. John Malkovich Directs Harold Pinter Reading. LAWeekly.

com, 12 Jan. http://www.laweekly.com/2012-01-12/stage/John-Malkovich-
Harold-Pinter-Julian-Sands/. (Rev. of Sands 2012c.)
Neal, Dave. 2012. Pinterest Is Named After the Playwright Harold Pinter:
Maybe. Inquirer, 6 Mar. http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2157409/
pinterest-named-playwright-harold-pinter.
New York Times. 2013. Quoted in an advertisement for Betrayal presented by
American Express. New Yorker, 1 July, 1–2. (Cf. http://www.betrayalbroad-
way.com.)
Ng, D. 2012. Culture Monster: Julian Sands, from “Dragon Tattoo” to Harold
Pinter. Los Angeles Times, Blogs, Entertainment, 18 Jan. http://latimesblogs.
latimes.com/culturemonster/2012/01/julian-sands-from-dragon-tattoo-to-
harold-pinter.html.
–, 2013. Broad Stage Announces 2013-14 Season, Jazz Initiative, Fundraising.
Latimes.com, 8 Apr. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/lal-
et-cm-broad-stage-20130407,0,6766300.story.
OBB (Off Broadway Booking). 2011, Video of Sands 2009. http://vimeo.
com/25539458. See Stoudt 2009.
Oliphant, R. 2010. Police “threatened to rape” Belarus Free Theatre Director
after Election Protest. Telegraph, 25 Dec. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/
worldnews/europe/belarus/8224956/Police-guard-threatened-to-rape-Bela-
rus-Free-Theatre-director-after-election-protest.html. (“The artistic direc-
tor of the Belarus Free Theatre Company says she was threatened with being
beaten and raped after being arrested during protests over last week’s disputed
election.”)
Peghinelli, A. 2012. “Bringing Back the Essential Meaning of the Theatre”:
Harold Pinter and the Belarus Free Theatre. English Language Overseas Per-
spectives and Enquiries (ELOPE), ed. Smiljana Komar and Uroš Mozetič:
Perspectives on Pinter: A European Cultural Capital Honours the Nobel Laure-
ate, 9 (Spring), ed. Tomaž Onič, 87–96.
PEN American Center. 2009. Tribute to Harold Pinter. Curated by Matthew
“Harry” Burton in collaboration with Frank Henschker. Proshansky Audito-
rium of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, at the Graduate Center of The
City Univ. of New York (CUNY), 2 May, New York, NY. PEN World Voices
Festival: The New York Festival of International Literature, 27 Apr.–3 May
2009. http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/3239/prmID/1831 and
http://web.gc.cuny.edu/mestc/events/s09/PEN_World_Voices.html (“Updat-
ed schedule”). See Merritt 2011c, 254–55.
–, 2011. Viva the Belarus Free Theatre, at Le Poisson Rouge, 19 Jan., New York,
NY. http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5539/prmID/1502. (Incl.
links to photo album on Flickr and video clips of the entire event.) See Le
Poisson Rouge 2011.
Perloff, C. 2008. Harold Pinter Knew Better Than to Explain. San Francisco
Chronicle 29 Dec.: E-1. SFGate.com, 29 Dec. http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-12-
29/entertainment/17131037_1_pinter-s-work-birthday-party-artistic-director.
–, 2009. Harold Pinter: 1930-200[8]. American Theatre 26, no. 3 (Mar.): 18. Aca-
demic Search Premier. EBSCO. PDF file. WilsonSelectPlus.
Pinter, H. 1961. “The Birthday Party” and “The Room”: Two Plays by Harold
Pinter. Rev. edn. New York: Grove Press, 1968.
–, 1965. The Homecoming. New York: Grove Press, 1967.
–, 1973. Monologue. London: Covent Garden Press Ltd. (“Written for televi-
sion [in 1972] and broadcast in April 1973 by the BBC. The actor was Henry
Woolf, who launched Pinter on his career as a playwright in 1957 by persuad-
ing him to write The Room for performance at the Drama Department of
Bristol University.”)
–, 1988. Mountain Language. New York: Grove Press, 1989.
–, 2005. Art, Truth and Politics: The Nobel Lecture. London: Faber & Faber. (Lim-
ited edn. of 1,000 copies; privately printed. Copy courtesy of Harold Pinter.)
–, 2009. Various Voices: Sixty Years of Prose, Poetry, Politics: 1948–2008. Rev. &
updated edn. London: Faber & Faber. (Previous edns. published in 1998 and
2005.)
Pinter, H., and J. Clarke. 2005. Voices. BBC Radio 3, 10 Oct. World première
broadcast on occasion of Pinter’s 75th birthday. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/
voices/pip/2v1eq/.
Le Poisson Rouge. 2011. Events: Viva the Belarus Free Theatre: A benefit w/ Tom
Stoppard, E. L. Doctorow, Billy Crudup, Iva Bittová and Don DeLillo & more.
Wed. January 19, 2011 / 6:30 PM. Lepoissonrouge.com, 13 Jan. http://lepois-
sonrouge.com/events/view/1950. See PEN American Center 2011.
Pordes, D. 2011. Dissident Performers Belarus Free Theatre Coming to Hong
Kong. CNN Go, 1 Mar. http://www.cnngo.com/hong-kong/play/thriving-
under-persecution-belarus-free-theatre-hong-kong-085479. (“Critically ac-
claimed theatre group turns persecution into inspiration.”)
Renton, L. 2011. From A Slight Ache to a Sense of Transcendence: The Changing
Performance of Pinter’s Silent Endings. In Remembering/Celebrating Harold
Pinter, ed. Francis Gillen, 1–9. See Gillen 2011. (Rev. version of paper pre-
sented in Leeds in 2007.)
Rohter, L. 2010. Theater Group in Belarus Is Forced Underground. New York
Times, 21 Dec. [22 Dec., New York edn.: C1.] http://www.nytimes.
com/2010/12/22/theater/22radar.html.
–, 2011. Theater: Escaped from Belarus, Actors Raise Voices. New York Times,
4 Jan. [5 Jan., New York edn.: C1.] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/
theater/05company.html.
Sands, J. 2009. The Poetry of Harold Pinter. A benefit for the homeless hosted by
the Church of St. Thomas, at The Odyssey Theatre, 9 Dec., Los Angeles, CA.
See Stoudt 2009; OBB 2011.
–, 2012a. A Celebration of Harold Pinter. Dir. John Malkovich. The Royce Gal-
lery, 18 & 19 May 2012, San Francisco, CA. (Rev. by Hodges.)
–, 2012b. A Celebration of Harold Pinter. Dir. John Malkovich. W. Scott McLu-
cas Studio Theater, Irish Repertory Theatre, 10 Oct. – 4 Nov., New York,
NY. http://www.irishrep.org/acelebrationofharoldpinter.html. (Incl. excerpts
from reviews and featuring link to video interview with Sands conducted by
Charlie Rose.)
–, 2012c. A Celebration of Harold Pinter. Dir. John Malkovich. A Fundraiser for
the Odyssey Theatre, at the Odyssey Theatre, 8 & 14 Jan., Los Angeles, CA.
(Rev. by Morris 2012.)
–, 2012d. A Celebration of Harold Pinter. Dir. John Malkovich. Special Fundrais-
ing Event: Back by Popular Demand! at the Odyssey Theatre, 6, 7, & 8 Apr.,
Los Angeles, CA. http://www.odysseytheatre.com/theatre2.php.
Scolnicov, H. 2012. The Experimental Plays of Harold Pinter. Newark: Univ. of
Delaware Press. (Rev. by Hunka.)
Shcherban, V., adapt. and dir. 2007. Being Harold Pinter. Belarus Free Theatre.
Artist and Citizen: 50 Years of Performing Pinter. Workshop Theatre, Univ.
of Leeds, Leeds, Eng., 13 Apr. UK première. Performed in Russian and Bela-
rusian with English supertitles (passim). See Billington 2007b and Hickling
2007.
–, 2008. Being Harold Pinter. Belarus Free Theatre. A Gala Evening. Soho Thea-
tre, London, Eng., 20 Feb. http://sohotheatre.mindunit.co.uk/p340.html.
–, 2009. Being Harold Pinter. Belarus Free Theatre. Sydney Festival. Belvoir Street
Theatre, 6–10 Jan., 28–31 Jan., 1 Feb., Surry Hills, Austral.; Q Theatre, 14–17
Jan., Penrith, Austral. See E. Blake 2008 and J. Blake 2009.
–, 2011a. Being Harold. Belarus Free Theatre. La MaMa Experimental Theatre

Club (ETC) and the Public Theater. Ellen Stewart Theatre, from 13 Apr. (pre-
views) to 15 May; opened 18 Apr., New York, NY. (In repertory with Dis-
cover Love and Zone of Silence.) http://lamama.org/ellen-stewart-theatre/
belarus-free-theatre/.
–, 2011b. Being Harold Pinter. Belarus Free Theatre. Owen Theatre (Good-
man Theatre), 20–29 Jan. 2011, Chicago, IL; Struble Theatre (Northwestern
U), 4–13 Feb. 2011, Evanston, IL; Upstairs at Chicago Shakespeare Theater
on Navy Pier, 18-20 Feb., Chicago, IL. http://www.chicagoshakes.com/
main.taf?p=2,19,3,30 (Main Page). http://www.chicagoshakes.com/main.
taf?p=2,19,3,30,2,3 (“Production Photo Gallery”).
–, 2011c. Being Harold Pinter. Belarus Free Theatre. Under the Radar Festival.
La MaMa ETC and the Public Theater, First Floor Theatre, 5–16 Jan.; Ben-
efit Gala, 19 Jan., New York, NY. (With “special [matinee] performances”
of Zone of Silence on 15 and 16 Jan.) http://lamama.org/first-floor-theatre/
being-harold-pinter/.
Sky News. 2005. 13 Oct. Sky News–Harold Pinter Blooper. Video clip of pre-
senter Ginny Buckley, posted on YouTube, by “doubledeckers,” 10 Oct. 2007.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5hcm-CZkKQ.
Sponsume.com. 2011. Belarus Free Theatre Project. Dec. http://www.sponsume.
com/project/belarus-free-theatre.
Staff and agencies. 2013. Tom Stoppard Named Winner of 2013 PEN Pinter Prize
for ‘courageous’ Work. Guardian, 30 July. Guardian.co.uk, 30 July. http://www.
theguardian.com/stage/2013/jul/31/tom-stoppard-winner-pen-pinter.
Standard Blog. 2012. Londoner’s Diary: Lady Antonia’s Pinteresque Pauses.
Standardblog.typepad.com, 1 Mar. http://standardblog.typepad.com/london-
ers_diary/2012/03/lady-antonias-pinteresque-pauses.html.
Stone, W. 2011. Cuba Hosts Pinter Venture. Morning Star, 17 Oct. http://www.
morningstaronline.co.uk/content/view/full/110817.
Stoudt, C. 2009. The Poetry of Harold Pinter, in a Benefit for the Homeless. Los
Angeles Times, Entertainment, Arts & Culture: Culture Monster (Blog), 8 Dec.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/12/the-poetry-of-pint-
er.html. (See Sands 2009.)
Stoppard, T. 2005. Accidental Tyranny. [Guardian, 30 Sept., Review: 4.] Guard-
ian.co.uk, Culture, Stage, Theatre, 30 Sept. http://www.guardian.co.uk/
stage/2005/oct/01/theatre. (“Belarus is one of the most repressive and bizarre
regimes in Europe. But Tom Stoppard, on a recent trip to the capital, Minsk,
found a thriving opposition and a hunger for art that challenges the ‘national
psychosis’.”)
Swans Commentary. 2002. Explico Algunas Cosas (I’m Explaining a Few Things)
por (by) Pablo Neruda. 25 Mar. http://www.swans.com/library/art8/xxx081.
html. (“English translation by Nathaniel Tarn … in Selected Poems: A Bilin-
gual Edition, by Pablo Neruda. London, Cape, 1970.”)
VillageVoice.2011.Theater:The2011ObieAwardsWinnersList:…TheRossWetzste-
on Award: Belarus Free Theatre (Includes $1,000 Prize). 18 May. http://www.
villagevoice.com/2011-05-18/theater/the-2011-obie-awards-winners-list/.
Wark, Kirsty. 2006. Harold Pinter on Newsnight Review. First broadcast on BBC
Two, 23 June. http://bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/5110060.stm.
Real Player streaming video. http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolavconsole/ukfs_news/
hi/newsid_4780000/newsid_4785400/nb_rm_4785475.stm
Weber, B., and M. Gussow. 2011. Theater: Ellen Stewart, Off Off Broadway Pio-
neer, Dies at 91. New York Times, 14 Jan. [New York edn.: B9.] http://www.
nytimes.com/2011/01/14/theater/14stewart.html. See Healy 2011.
White, B., host. 2010. Opening monologue. Saturday Night Live. NBC.com,
8 May. Video clip (4:30). http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/bet-
ty-white-monologue/n12809/. Reposted with a transcript by Brett Reilly on
SMSEO: Social Media & SEO, 9 May. http://socialmediaseo.net/2010/05/09/
betty-white-host-snl/.
Index
A Benigni, Roberto 56
Abarbanel, Jonathan 184 Bennett, Alan 188
ABC 17 Berger, Aleš 85
Accident 18, 25, 26 Berman, Russell A. 188
–– Anna 26 Bertorelli, Toni 55
–– Charley 25, 26 Best, Eve 179
–– Rosalind 26 Betrayal 24, 25, 26, 35, 55, 56, 71, 83,
–– Stephen 25, 26 85, 96, 97, 98, 100, 107, 109, 112,
Adamov, Arthur 85, 141 120, 122, 142, 157, 158, 159, 180
Albee, Edward 58 –– Emma 26, 142
Anderson, Laurie 181 Bianchi, Giampiero 55
Angelovski, Bore 105 Bibič, Polde 86
Applicant 85 Bierut, Bolesław 141
Arsovska, Ljubica 107 Bilginer, Haluk 157
Artaud, Antonin 48, 172 Billington, Michael 37, 54, 68, 154,
Ashes to Ashes 55, 56, 85, 157, 158, 170, 172, 180, 183, 186, 190
159, 170, 171, 175 Binasco, Valerio 51
Asti, Adriana 54 Birthday Party, The 17, 24, 31, 32,
Atwood, Margaret 73 34, 53, 60, 78, 79, 80, 83, 84, 85, 96,
Axer, Erwin 142 104, 108, 109, 112, 114, 116, 120,
B 129, 137, 141, 142, 157, 158, 159,
Baccalà 48 185, 189
Bancroft, Anne 19 –– Goldberg 116
Baron, David 17 –– McCann 116
Bašić, Relja 95 –– Meg 34
Bašić, Sonja 95 –– Petey 185
Bates, Alan 114 –– Stanley 60, 116, 185
BBC 17, 37 Black and White, The 85
Beckett, Samuel 34, 39, 40, 48, 54, 82, Bogácsi, Erzsébet 121
85, 90, 91, 93, 94, 95, 96, 99, 100, 104, Bogdanova, Irina 184
105, 107, 110, 111, 114, 117, 121, Bonacelli, Paolo 55
128, 130, 141, 148, 149, 156, 191, 193 Bonaiuto, Anna 55
Beethoven, Ludwig van 32 Bond, Edward 39
Being Harold Pinter 169, 170, 171, Borboni, Paola 54
172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 181, Bouchard, Suzanne 188
182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 190, 191 Brantley, Ben 175, 184, 185, 187
Belarus Free Theatre 169, 170, 171, Braschi, Nicoletta 56
172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 181, Brecht, Bertolt 184
182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 190 Bridges, Alan 43
206 Index
British Council 79 Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich 33, 38,

British New Wave 126 111, 148
Brooks, Cleanth 115 Cherry Orchard, The 33
Bulić, Neva 95 Churchill, Caryl 107
Bunuel, Luis 72 Cicero 33
Burkman, Katherine 69 Cieślak, Piotr 147
Burkman, Katherine H. 68, 177 Clarke, James 190
Burton, Harry (Matthew) 40, 178, Clinton, Hillary 182
179, 188 Cocteau, Jean 72
Cold War 78, 119, 122, 125, 127, 131,
C 132, 136, 137
Calderon de la Barca, Pedro 41 Colin, Margaret 181
Calenda, Antonio 55 Collection, The 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 53,
Çalışlar, Aziz 157 89, 92, 93, 142
Cantata dei giorni dispari 42, 46 –– Bill 22, 23
–– Capa D’Angelo 42 –– Harry 23
–– Carlo 42 –– James 22, 23
–– Zi’ Nicola 42, 43, 48 –– Stella 22, 23
Canziani, Roberto 54, 56, 57, 58 Comfort of Strangers, The 71, 72, 73
Çapan, Nigar 157 –– Colin 71, 72
capitalism 50, 122 –– Mary 71, 72
Caretaker, The 17, 18, 19, 24, 25, 32, communism 12, 77, 78, 91, 103, 119,
34, 35, 49, 53, 60, 78, 81, 82, 83, 84, 143, 145, 149
85, 86, 90, 97, 105, 106, 107, 108, Corneille, Pierre 41
109, 112, 114, 115, 120, 121, 142, Corrado, Frank 187, 188, 189
146, 147, 157, 158 Cortese, Valentina 54
–– Aston 34, 97, 114, 115, 116, 148 Coward, Noel 111
–– Davies 34, 60, 86, 97, 114, 115, 116, Crisp, Quentin 17
147, 148 Crudup, Billy 181
–– Mick 97, 109, 114, 115, 116, 148 Cuculić, Kim 98, 100
Carić, Marin 97 Culík, Jan 125
Case, Sue-Ellen 153 Cvetkovski, Vladimir 108
Castellitto, Sergio 55 Cywińska-Adamska, Izabela 142
Cecchi, Carlo 55
Celebration 31, 37, 38, 39, 85, 157, D
158, 159, 181, 187, 188, 189, 190 D’Amico, Silvio 41
–– Julie 37, 38, 39 Dance, Charles 181
–– Lambert 37, 38, 39 Davico Bonino, Guido 53
–– Matt 37, 38, 39 De Filippo, Eduardo 31, 32, 36, 41,
–– Prue 38, 39 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50
–– Richard 38 De Filippo, Peppino 49
Celestini, Ascanio 48 De Filippo, Titina 46
Index 207
De Fillippo, Peppino 49 Eustis, Oskar 182

De’ Baggi, Romeo 53 Evans, Charles 105, 136
Del Bono, Laura 53, 54 Everett, Rupert 72
DeLillo, Don 182
Derebanova, Violeta 108 F
Derkaczew, Joanna 147 Fabbri, Marisa 54
Derrida, Jacques 179 Fabulazzo 44
Dimitrov, Bratislav 110 Falk, Barbara J. 130
Discover Love 184 Family Voices 108
Doctorow, E. L. 182 film noir 72
Dovzhenko, Alexander Petrovich 72 Findlater, Richard 82
Dražić Zekić, Paola 99 Fisher, Andreas 120
Duffy, Carol Ann 180 Flower for Pina Bausch, A 183
Dukakis, Olympia 181 Fo, Dario 32, 41, 44, 45, 46, 48,
Dukore, Bernard F. 111, 112 49, 50
Dukovski, Dejan 110 Ford, Anna 155, 161
Dulčić, Ante 94 Foretić, Dalibor 96
Dumb Waiter, The 17, 24, 43, 53, 54, Forte, Iaia 55
56, 78, 85, 94, 97, 99, 100, 108, 109, Franco, Francisco 173
110, 120, 141, 142, 157, 158, 159, Fraser, Antonia 172, 176, 178, 179,
165, 178, 180, 188 180, 192
–– Ben 43, 94, 179 French Lieutenant’s Woman, The 26
–– Gus 43, 56, 179 Frndić, Nasko 94
Dürrenmatt, Friedrich 141 Fuat, Mehmet 157
Dwarfs, The 18, 23, 24, 25, 53
–– Len 23, 24 G
–– Mark 23, 24 Gabrijelčič, Samo 83
–– Peter 23, 24 Gajos, Janusz 147, 148
–– Virginia 23, 24 Gal, Susan 123
Gale, Steven H. 120
E Galiena, Anna 56
Eastern Bloc 10, 119, 122, 125, 126, Gallagher-Ross, Jacob 174
128, 129, 136 Gambon, Michael 181
Eisenstein, Sergei Mikhailovich 72 Garboli, Cesare 55
Eliot, T.S. 111 Garbuglia, Mario 54
Emond, Linda 181 Garner, Stanton B. Jr 39
Endgame 114 Generation Jeans 183
Equus 67 Genet, Jean 48
Ergen, Mehmet 157 Georgievski, Ljupco 107
Esslin, Martin 79, 110, 111, 112, 124, Gerić, Vladimir 98, 99
125, 126, 127, 132, 133, 134, 135, Giammarco, Rodolfo di 54
136, 137 Gillen, Frank 179
208 Index
Gjuzel, Bogomil 104, 105, 106, 107, 93, 94, 96, 104, 106, 107, 108, 109,
110, 112, 113 110, 120, 122, 131, 132, 141, 142,
Glamočan, Zjena 99 146, 147, 171, 175, 179, 188, 189,
Gliński, Robert 142 191
Glogov Zbun 110 –– Lenny 45, 188
Go-Between, The 25 –– Max 188
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 41 –– Ruth 21, 23, 93, 147, 191
Göktekin, Y. 156 Hothouse, The 24, 55, 85, 180
Goldoni, Carlo 41 Hribar, Darja 79, 80, 81, 83,
Goliński, Jerzy 142 85, 86
Golob, Maila 83 Hristiv, Vasil 104, 108
Gordon, Lois G. 178 Hűbner, Zygmunt 142
Gordon, Robert 176 Hunka, George 176
Gotovac, Mani 93, 94, 98
Grabowski, Mikołaj 143 I
Graham, William Sydney 89 Ibsen, Henrik 33, 59
Grgičević, Marija 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, Ilısu Dam Project 155, 156
95, 96 Imhof, Rudiger 120
Grozdanov, Borče 112 International Harold Pinter Society,
Gruda, Józef 142 The 176, 177, 178, 188
Guerrieri, Gerardo 54 Ionesco, Eugène 79, 85, 90, 91, 100,
Guest, Julia 155, 156 111, 126, 141
Gussow, Mel 112, 185 Iron Curtain 78, 119, 125
Irons, Jeremy 181
H Isaacs, Jason 178
Hall, Ann C. 178, 179 Ishiguro, Kazuo 71
Hall, Christie 187 Ivanković, Hrvoje 100
Hall, Peter 25, 40, 78, 79, 80, 112 Ivanovski, Ivan 103, 112
Hall, Stuart 131, 132 Ives, David 107
Hamerski, Oscar 148 Ivory, James 71
Hamilton, Josh 181
Handmaid’s Tale, The 73 J
Hare, David 32, 112, 180 Janáček, Leoš 32
Havel, Václav 39, 184, 185 Janković, Vjekoslav 99, 100
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 130 Javornik, Marjan 82, 83
Hickling, Alfred 173 Javoršek, Jože 85
Hobson, Harold 79, 84 Ježić, B. 97
Hoffman, Jerzy 142 Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer 71
Hoffman, Philip Seymour 181 Jonson, Ben 41
Holm, Ian 78 Julius Caesar 33
Homecoming, The 18, 21, 24, 26, 35, –– Antony 33
39, 40, 45, 53, 78, 79, 80, 81, 85, 92, Juriša, Ivo 93
Index 209
K Lipovčan, Srećko 92
Kacarov, Trajce 112 Lloyd-Pack, Roger 190
Kádár, János 131 Look Back in Anger 82
Kafka, Franz 94, 100, 110, 111, 131 Lope de Vega, Felix 41
Kane, Sarah 171 Lorca, Federico García 173
Katunar, Stefano 99 Losey, Joseph 25
Kean, Edmund 41 Louis XIV 41
Kędzierski, Marek 149 Lover, The 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24,
Kerr, Walter 84 49, 53, 54, 56, 85, 89, 91, 92, 93, 98,
Kéry, László 131, 132 99, 100, 107, 109, 112, 120, 142
Khalezin, Nikolai 170, 171, 174, 183 –– Richard 20, 21, 22
Kiiru, Lawrence 99, 100 –– Sarah 20, 21, 22, 91, 98
Kind of Alaska, A 56, 85 Lucie, Doug 188
Kligman, Gail 123 Lukács, George 130, 131
Kline, Kevin 181 Lukashenko, Aleksander 174, 181,
Kljaković, Vanča 94 183, 186
Kociniak, Marian 146 Lullo, Giorgio de 55
Koliada, Natalia 170, 171, 173, 174, Lužina, Jelena 103, 105, 106
177, 182, 184, 185, 186
Koshka Hot, Rajna 107, 108, 110, M
111, 112, 114 Macadamia Nut Brittle 59
Kosmač, Ciril 78 Macchia, Giovanni 42
Krapp’s Last Tape 40, 49, 114 Maeterlink, Maurice 111
–– Krapp 41, 43 Majcherek, Janusz 148
Kreczmar, Jerzy 142 Malkovich, John 187
Krstulović, Zdravka 95 Mamet, David 110
Kruszyński, Piotr 143 Marinoni, Laura 55
Kudrjavcev, Anatolij 96 Marlowe, Christopher 59, 111
Kushner, Tony 181, 182 Marotti, Miro 95
Kuzmanov, Todor 112 Marx, Karl 130
Marxist 128, 129
L Marxist, Western 12, 129
Lacey, Stephen 126, 128, 129, 130 Marxist-Leninist 12, 125, 126, 127,
Lahr, John 79, 146 128, 130, 131, 132, 134, 136, 137
Landscape 26, 95, 108, 109, 112, Maugham, Sir Robert 25
120, 142 McEwan, Ian 72
Last to Go 85 Mencinger, Lea 86
Law, Jude 183 Merchant, Ismail 71
Lenin, Vladimir 130 Merchant, Vivien 20, 78
Lievi, Cesare 56 Mia famiglia 43, 48, 49
Linn, Stella 119, 120 –– Alberto Stigliano 48
Lipiec-Wróblewska, Agnieszka 143 –– Guglielmo Speranza 49
210 Index
Mihályi, G. 130, 131 Nobel Lecture 84, 134, 169, 171, 177
Miliband, Ed 183 Nobel Prize 32, 50, 103, 107, 111,
Milišić, Milan 98 112, 121, 142, 143, 146, 147, 154,
Miller, Arthur 111, 155, 161 169, 170, 172
Moder, Janko 81, 85 Nobel speech. See Nobel Lecture
Mojaš, Davor 99 Non-Aligned Movement 78
Molière 41, 42 Novak, Jernej 80
Monologue 108, 178, 188 Nowak, Maciej 143
–– Man 178
Monti, Ivana 55 O
Monticelli, Guido de 56 O’Byrne, Brían F. 179
Moonlight 157 Occhini, Ilaria 55
Morini, Mario 56 Odd Man Out 55
Mortimer, Penelope 19 Odets, Clifford 184
Moscato, Enzo 48 Ofluoğlu, Filiz 157
Mosley, Nicholas 25 Old Times 26, 40, 54, 63, 83, 89, 95,
Mountain Language 32, 50, 98, 100, 96, 100, 104, 108, 109, 112, 120,
109, 144, 153, 155, 157, 158, 159, 143, 157, 158, 159, 171, 188, 189
160, 161, 162, 163, 171, 173, 189 –– Anna 55
–– Elderly Woman 162, 163, 173 –– Deeley 51
–– Officer 162 –– Kate 55, 95
–– Prisoner 163 Olivier, Laurence 41, 43
–– Sergeant 162 One for the Road 40, 108, 109, 112,
–– Young Woman 162 144, 153, 154, 155, 157, 158, 159,
Must You Go? My Life With Harold 160, 163, 171, 175
Pinter 178, 179, 180 –– Gila 160
–– Nicky 160
N –– Nicolas 160
Napoli milionaria! –– Victor 160, 161
–– Gennaro 44 Orešković, Želimir 98, 100
Natale in casa Cupiello 36, 45 Orsini, Umberto 54, 55
–– Concetta 36 Osborne, John 82, 111
–– Luca 36, 45 Othello
Neruda, Pablo 173 –– Iago 42
New World Order, The 144, 170, 171 Özer, Özcan 157
Nichols, Mike 71 Özveri, Ahmet Yaşar 157
Night Out, A 17, 19, 25, 53, 54, 142
Night School (My Nephew) 18, 19, 20 P
–– Sally 20 Pappas, Victor 188
Nissim, Elio 53 Paro, Georgij 91, 92, 93, 94, 96
No Man’s Land 24, 50, 55, 96, 100, Party Time 50
122, 157, 158, 180, 188 Patinkin, Mandy 181, 182
Index 211
Patroni Griffi, Giuseppe 55 ricci/forte 53, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62,
Pawłowski, Roman 143 63, 64
Pegenaute, Luis 122 Richardson, Ralph 32
PEN 13, 155, 178, 180, 181 Rogacki, Henryk 147
PEN Pinter Prize 180 Rogers, J. T. 188
Penov, Blagoj 109 Rogers, Paul 78
Perišin, Frane 99 Roof, Judith 190
Perković, Vlatko 96, 100 Room, The 17, 24, 32, 53, 78, 157,
Perloff, Carey 189 180, 191
Petan, Žarko 79, 80, 81, 86 –– Rose 191
Pinter Review, The 177, 179 Ross, Gallagher 174
Pinteresque 32, 57, 84, 97, 99, 193 Rošić, Neva 91, 98
Pirandello, Luigi 32, 41, 44, 46, 49 Ruccello, Annibale 48
Pleasance, Donald 114 Rules of War 181
Pocheć, Karol 148 Russell, Mark 182
Powder Keg 110 Ruzzante (Angelo Beolco), 41
Predan, Alja 85
Predan, Vasja 77, 81 S
Proud Flesh 110 Sakellaridou, Elizabeth 163
Proust Screenplay, The 25, 157 Sands, Julian 186, 187
Pryce-Jones, Alan 84 Sas, Barbara 146
Pudovkin, Vsevolod Saturday, Sunday, Monday 43
Illarionovich 72 –– Don Antonio 43
Puljizević, Joso 83, 91, 92, 93 Sav, Ergun 157
Pumpkin Eater, The 18, 19 Saviano, Roberto 180
–– Jo 19 Scacchi, Greta 55
Scarpetta, Eduardo 48
Q Scatton, Linda 100
Questi fantasmi 48 Schechner, Richard 81
Schiller, Friderich 41
R Schlesinger, John 73
Rabe, Lily 181 Schlondorff, Volker 73
Racine, Jean 41 Schneider, Alan 114
Radić, Tomislav 96, 100 Schöpflin, George 123, 126, 130, 136
Ransom, John Crowe 115 Schrader, Paul 73
Reed, Lou 181 screenplay 18, 19, 25, 68, 71, 72, 74, 80
Reisz, Karel 73 Senker, Boris 100
Remains of the Day, The 71, 73 Serra, Alessandra 53
Remembrance of Things Past 121 Servant, The 18, 25, 26
Reply to Kathy Acker, A 185 –– Barrett 25
Request Stop 85 –– Tony 25
Reunion 72 Shaffer, Peter 67, 94
212 Index
Shakespeare, William 33, 41, 42, 56, T

111, 131, 182, 189 Taborski, Bolesław 142, 143, 144
Shammah, Andrée Ruth 55, 56 Tarn, Adam 141
Shaw, George Bernard 33, 111 Tate, Allen 115
Shaw, Robert 114 Taylor, John Russell 127
Shcherban, Vladimir 169, 170, Tea Party 18, 19, 24, 120
171, 185 Tito, Josip Broz 78
Shulman, Milton 84 Todorović, Predrag 104
Silence 120 Tomše, Dušan 85
Sixty, Antonio 55 Tour, Andy de la 190
Skolnicov, Hanna 176 Trendafilovska, Hariklija 108
Slight Ache, A 17, 53, 67, 68, 69, 142 Troia’s Discount 59
–– Edward 67, 68, 69 Troisi, Massimo 48
–– Flora 67, 68, 69 Trouble in the Works 85
–– Matchseller 67, 68, 69 Turtle Diary 74
Smajić, A. 99 Tutumluer, Serhat 160
Smasek, Lojze 81 Tynan, Kenneth 37, 84, 116, 126, 127
Spacey, Kevin 183
Spasov, Darko 109 U
Spinella, Stephen 181 Uchman, Jadwiga 150
Stalin, Joseph 78, 141 Uzun, Mehmet 158
Stanford, Alan 181
Stanislavski, Constantin 130 V
Stapleton, Jean 31 Valli, Romolo 55
Stefanovski, Goran 106, 110, 112, 113 Various Voices 179, 190
Stefanovski, Riste 104, 108, 109 Victoria Station 144, 146
Stewart, Ellen 174 Vidmar, Josip 80
Stokes, John 132 Vidović, Ivica 94
Stoppard, Tom 111, 156, 157, 170, Violić, Alexandra-Saša 93
173, 174, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184 Visconti, Luchino 54, 63
Strathairn, David 31 Viviani, Vittorio 46, 48
Strindberg, August 33, 59, 111, 148 voci di dentro, Le 32, 42, 48
Sullivan, Daniel 179 Voices 190
Swedish Academy. See Nobel Prize Vukov Colić, Dražen 95
Szántó, Judit 124, 125, 126, 127, Vurnik, Franc 82, 83
129, 136
Szczerski, Piotr 144 W
Šedlbauer, Zvone 82, 84 Waiting for Godot 82, 104, 110, 141,
Škiljan, Mladen 97 193
Šoletić, Glorija 99 –– Godot 128
Šoljan, Antun 96 –– Vladimir 193
Šoljan, Nada 94, 100 Warsaw Pact 78
Index 213
White, Betty 193 Yerebakan, Ibrahim 156, 157

Who the Fuck Started All This? 110 Yeşilkaya, Akif 159
William, Baker 178 Yılmaz, Sevcan 157
Williams, Raymond 129, 131 Yugoslavia 77, 78, 79, 83, 89, 90, 98,
Wilton, Penelope 181 100, 104, 105, 116
Wójcik, Magdalena 147
Wolfit, Donald 40 Z
Woolf, Henry 17, 178, 179, 188 Żak, Stanisław 145
Working With Pinter 179, 188 Zarhy-Levo, Yael 119
Zone of Silence 81, 84
Y Zuppa, Vjeran 181, 182, 184
Yazbek, Samar 180 Žmavc, Janez 95
Yeats, W.B. 111

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Tomaž Onič (ed.

Harold Pinter on International Stages

Harold Pinter on International Stages

Harold Pinter on International Stages

Harold Pinter on International Stages

Cover image: ©Silvo Salčnik – Sax

ISBN 978-3-631-65202-2 (Print)

Pia Vittoria Colombo

Eve Marine Dauvergne

Pinter Further East......................................................................................................75

Pinter across the Atlantic���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 167

Susan Hollis Merritt

The arrangement of chapters follows a geographical order, starting with the

forte touch. Pinter’s Anatomy was as much a success as a controversy; however, it

writers involved in the dissemination of Pinter’s work in Macedonia. References

Harold Pinter became a playwright almost by accident, rather than by con-

This theme is pertinent to interpersonal relationships, which only become a

Harold Pinter (1930-2008)

Thus, even a nonsensical or inarticulate speech might be as dramatic as a

Aston. What did you say your name was?

Davies. Caretaking, eh?

Aston. More or less exactly what you ….

These splendid, concise dialogues produce a dramatic effect, due to the

Likewise, in Eduardo’s Natale in casa Cupiello the play opens as follows:

Equally interesting is the frequent use of repetitions, one of those devices

of ‘Hello’ followed by a name still in Celebration.) Although this kind of dialogue

As a matter of fact, it is widely known that Pinter gained confidence in this

Eduardo De Filippo (1900-1984)

6 Italian original: Il teatro bisognerebbe scriverlo sul pentagramma – lo dicevamo spesso

origine dialettale e popolare. E persino cadenze, i suoni, le pause, le intonazioni, testimo-

a linguistic standardization, covering chaos beneath an apparent order, domi-

8 Italian original: /…/ si è sempre rifiutato di parlare in “italianesco” o “italiota”, cioè

It is widely agreed that Eduardo’s cultural and social background, marked by

Introduction: Pinter, Italy and the Italian Stages

Re-proposing Pinter in the Italian contingency

ricci/forte: Pinter’s Post

8 For more information, see http://www.bunker.si/eng/macadamia-nut-brittle (accessed

Pinter’s Anatomy consists of 3 episodes connected by the same underlying

Pinter, H. 2005. Teatro. (ed. and transl. A. Serra) Torino: Einaudi.

Interview with Harold Pinter (held in Harold Pinter’s house in

It seems to happen quite often in cinema.

You had already finished the whole script?

In The Comfort of Strangers, I was fascinated by Robert’s character, his being

What was your impression of the film version of Turtle Diary?

This chapter focuses on the early productions of Pinter in Slovene theatres.

A deeper understanding of Pinter and an appreciation of his style is shown

This statement could be an indicator that despite the progress orientation of

Since sources on Pinter were abundant by the late eighties, it is surprising

Mencinger, L. 1990. Na odru je doma resnica. Gorenjski glas, 19 Oct: 17.

Gotovac, however, emphasized certain contents in Pinter’s world and his

From 1971 to 1981

After 12 performances, the production closed on 6th April 1971.

From 1984 to 2007

Frndić, N. 1969. Izvrsni Dulčić i Vidović. Borba, 17 Apr.

occasioned, and so “Godot’s influence among Belgrade intellectuals and artists

… played in libraries, basements, studio theatres and university rooms, sometimes to

There is no corresponding “underground Pinter” in Yugoslavian theatre his-

militated against the production of avant-garde drama in general and Pinter in

Productions and Translations of Pinter in Macedonia

2 My information is based primarily on the production records generously shared with

Critical Response to Pinter in Macedonia

Macedonian poet Bogomil Gjuzel has also commented on the difficulty of

complete introduction to Pinter published in the Macedonian language, includes

Pinter across the Atlantic�� 167

8 “Az ellenőrzés problémája Pinter drámáiban szorosan kapcsolódik az író nyelvhasz

potential allegories indirectly parodying the officially sanctioned Marxist-Leninist