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Author Archives: Basil Chiasson

Shut It Down: The Many Faces of Censorship

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Two days recently spent in the Pinter Archive, at the British Library, have predictably enough turned up a few more gems. During this visit, I looked at a number of scrapbooks containing materials relating to Pinter’s political activism. Taking a broad view of the items Pinter collected over several decades makes it easier to spot the themes at work. For example, the items Pinter collated into scrapbook form through the … Continue reading →

Pinter and the Law; Or, When Life Imitates Art 

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In my research for this project I often come across information which is familiar because I’ve seen it more than once. Then there’s the sort which is ‘familiar’ because I’ve seen but forgotten it along the way. But the best scenarios are when I discover new information–new to me or, even better, new to a lot of folks. In this regard I’ve been wanting to write a blog on misses, … Continue reading →

The Fact of Pinter

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To open his keynote speech for the Staging Pinter conference at Birmingham, playwright and lecturer Steve Waters declared that ‘Pinter is such a fact for all of us.’ The presentations and interaction that transpired over Friday and Saturday demonstrated, explored and even interrogated the fact that Pinter ‘is such a fact.’ The demographic of delegates was international: with parts of Europe, the Middle East, North America and Great Britain represented and … Continue reading →

A Dialogued Review: Ian Rickson’s ‘The Birthday Party’ 2018

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The following dialogue explores the recent production of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party, which is playing at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London’s West End from 9 January to 14 April 2018. The production is directed by Ian Rickson and stars Peter Wight as Petey, Zoë Wannamaker as Meg, Toby Jones as Stanley, Pearl Mackie as Lulu, Stephen Mangan as Goldberg and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor as McCann. Set design is by … Continue reading →

Often Political, Always Dramatic, Ever a Sketch Writer

Lately our research team has been endeavouring to build a complete publication record of Pinter’s works as part of the content of the database. This project happens to entail contending with lost and more recently discovered works. Perhaps fittingly, then, Pinter’s widow, Lady Antonia Fraser, has just discovered a never-before-seen sketch by her late husband, which she submitted to the Guardian for publication, accompanied by a few of her own … Continue reading →


On the Road to Pinter

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Lately, as part of my research for the Pinter Histories and Legacies project, I’ve been leafing through Pinter’s scrapbooks in the British Library. Two weeks ago I ran into some materials on various productions of Pinter’s play One for the Road, from 1984. This caught my attention because most of my work on Pinter has focused on his shift after the 1970s into a more explicitly political register. In one … Continue reading →

Pinter’s History, Pinter’s Legacies

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The first order of business for the Harold Pinter: Histories and Legacies project is to develop a database for registering every major production in the United Kingdom, from 1957 to 2017, of Harold Pinter’s plays, screenplays, television and radio dramas. As our team beavers away, reviewing and tweaking the conceptual design of the database and anticipating its completion, we’re all engaged in various projects and tasks relevant to both the … Continue reading →

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