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Pinter the Player
- Modern Drama
- University of Toronto Press
- Volume 22, Number 4, Winter 1979
- pp. 349-363
- 10.1353/mdr.1979.0008
- Article
- Additional Information
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Pinter the Player LESLIE SMITH IN THE GROWING VOLUME OF CRITICAL STUDY that Pinter's plays have attracted, perhaps insufficient attention has been paid to his early years as a repertory actor, and the influence these years had on his work as a playwright. Yet, as Pinter has said, a dramatist must "absorb a great many things of value from an active and intense experience in the theatre ... " throughout rehearsal and performance.' And he acknowledges that "my experience as an actor has influenced my playsit must have- though it's impossible for me to put my finger on it exactly.'" There has been, it is true, some hostile reference to those early years, implying that Pinter exploits some imagined actor's "box of tricks" to produce plays which are empty of content but work in the theatre. A well-known example is Nigel Dennis's 1970 review of two critical studies of Pinter, in which he asserts that: "[Pinter] is still acting when he supposes himself to be writing.. . . the originality of all the plays lies in the very peculiar scope they offer to the actors in them. All Pinter plays are like elaborations of the drama school exercise, when the student is told (say), 'You are alone in a room. Suddenly, the door opens. You see a man standing there... . O.K. Now, you improvise the rest."') A more recent example would be Clive James's hostile and facetious review of the television production of No Man's Land' Calling attention to the number of drinks consumed in the play, the well-managed exits and entrances, the "scatological " dialogue, James's constant refrain is, "Actors love these things," and his conclusion, the play is "a con" and consists "entirely of its own teChnique.. . . " 349 L.c.':'LIJ:. ,c, J VlIl n A detailed study of Pinter's best work, however, gives no real support to this line of attack. What does emerge is a close but creative connection between Pinter's experience of repertory in the 50s and his plays. What follows is an attempt to suggest some aspects of that connection. First, however, it is useful to recall three categories of theatre that Peter Brook distinguishes in his book The Empty Space: Deadly Theatre, Holy Theatre and Rough Theatre. Deadly Theatre is the form of theatre without its indwelling spirit; it is the commercial theatre with inadequate rehearsal time, the weekly rep theatre existing on a diet of stale West End successes-the theatre that plays safe but does not satisfy. Holy Theatre is the theatre of ritual and ceremony; theatre that fires the spirit and transcends our everyday experiences, as-in certain conditions and at certain times-the best of the classical repertory can. Rough Theatre Brook evokes in terms of "Salt, sweat, noise, smell: the theatre that's not in a theatre, the theatre on carts, on wagons, on trestles, audiences standing, drinking, sitting round tables, audiences joining in, answering back; theatre in back rooms, upstairs rooms, barns; the one-night stands, the tom sheet pinned up across the hall, the battered screen to conceal the quick changes.... '" Such theatre is popular, anti-authoritarian, includes the Elizabethan drama, circus, music-hall, Spike Milligan, larry's Ubu Roi. It is, Brook considers , of key importance: "every attempt to revitalize the theatre has gone back to the popular source."6 He recognises that rough and holy theatre are obverse and reverse of the same coin, and can coexist in the same play: "if the holy is the yearning for the invisible through its visible incarnations, the rough also is a dynamic stab at a certain ideal. Both theatres feed on deep and true aspirations in their audiences, both tap infinite resources of energy.... " 7 Harold Pinter's work as an actor in the period from 1951 to 1958 involved him in all three kinds of theatre. Between )951 and )952, he toured Ireland with Anew McMaster's company, bringing Shakespeare to remote country towns and villages. This band of actors with their improvised settings, one-night stands, audiences unfamiliar with any kind of drama, were like survivors of an older Elizabethan tradition of travelling players. Here, surely, was...