Harold Pinter dies

From Joanna, Communications Manager

If you haven't heard, playwright Harold Pinter passed away on Christmas Eve at the age of 78 after a long battle with cancer. He might be one of the only playwrights in history to have spawned his own adjective—"Pinter-esque". He's best known for delving into complicated interpersonal relationships with unflinchingly sparse and meticulous language (and sometimes the absence of language, i.e. "The Pinter Pause.")

From an Associated Press article, which ran in the Seattle Times:

"Pinter restored theater to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretense crumbles," the Nobel Academy said. "With a minimum of plot, drama emerges from the power struggle and hide-and-seek of interlocution."

His characters' internal fears and longings, their guilt and difficult sexual drives were set against the neat lives they constructed in order to try to survive. Usually enclosed in one room, the acts usually illustrated the characters' lives as a sort of grim game with actions that often contradicted words. Gradually, the layers were peeled back.

We'll be staging his Betrayal here in February.