Pinter in the Theatre

This is the first book to focus on Harold Pinter as a man of the theatre - as an actor and a director, and as a playwright. Pinter's practical understanding of his craft is revealed through interviews conducted over forty years and through conversations with fellow theatre practitioners. Nine actors and directors who have worked with Pinter in the theatre talk candidly about what it's like to appear in a Pinter play, to direct a Pinter play, to be directed by Pinter, to work alongside Pinter as an actor. The voices belong to directors Sam Mendes, Peter Hall and Katie Mitchell, and to actors Barry Foster, Susan Engel, Roger Lloyd Pack, Roger Davidson, Douglas Hodge and Harry Burton. Before that come five interviews with Pinter himself, ranging from 1961, when Pinter was 30, through the string of successful plays in the seventies and the political pieces of the eighties up to an extensive 1996 interview surveying the whole gamut of his work. Also included are fascinating contributions from two of Pinter's oldest friends: Mick Goldstein, the model for Len in Pinter's autobiographical novel, The Dwarfs, and Henry Woolf, who persuaded Pinter to write The Room, his very first play. Book jacket.