Category Archives: Interview

‘possibly apocryphal’: Anecdotes and Memories of Pinter

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Much of our time on the Harold Pinter: Histories and Legacies project is concerned with locating, exploring and documenting ‘official’ historical traces of the life and work of Harold Pinter via various archives, libraries and published works. What we have also discovered however, is that a project of this scale focused on the creative output of one person is bound to uncover, solicit or otherwise happen across its fair share … Continue reading →

Power to the People: Pinter, Amateur Performance and the Questors Theatre

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There can be little doubt that Pinter’s professional career benefitted hugely from the commercial theatre sector in the West End and Broadway, from state-subsidised organisations like the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre, or public broadcasting services like the BBC. One of the primary aims of the Harold Pinter: Histories and Legacies project is to trace, chart, archive and contextualise every professional production of Harold Pinter’s plays in the … Continue reading →

Reflections on the ‘Pinter on Film, Television and Radio’ conference, 19-20 September 2018

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The University of Reading arm of the Pinter Histories and Legacies project—peopled by Professor Jonathan Bignell, Dr Billy Smart and Dr Amanda Wrigley—were thrilled to welcome project colleagues and an international group of academic friends old and new from an exciting range of disciplines to the University of Reading’s Minghella Studies, the home of the Film, Theatre and Television Department, on 19 September 2018 for the first day of the … Continue reading →

Harold Pinter at the RSC (Part 2): Reflections on the Archive

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One of the consistent pleasures of research into the production histories of Pinter’s theatrical work for this project has been the opportunity to learn from and work with the archivists and librarians at different institutions that hold rich and varied material connected with Pinter’s expansive career. Of course, as with any research strategy – particularly those engaged in revisiting or reassessing traces of past performances – archival research is not … Continue reading →

Sir Peter Hall, 1930-2017

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The Pinter: Histories and Legacies team were saddened to learn earlier this week of the death of Sir Peter Hall. Without any doubt, Hall was the most important figure in post-war twentieth-century British theatre, a director and visionary whose own history is a map of that period, and whose legacies are interwoven into the fabric of the British cultural landscape. He modernised the British theatre, elevated the role and artistry … Continue reading →

1957 and all that

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Sixty years ago, Harold Pinter’s first play The Room was performed in a converted squash court at the University of Bristol. Pinter’s school chum Henry Woolf was studying drama there in one of the first postgraduate cohorts of the first University drama department in the country, and asked if Pinter were able to supply a play for him to produce on his course. Pinter had previously told Woolf of his … Continue reading →