Harold Pinter

Dr Catriona Fallow (University of Birmingham) specialises in contemporary British and European playwriting, theatre history, historiography and archival studies. Her work has appeared in Studies in Theatre and Performance and in forthcoming edited collections on the work of Dennis Kelly (Manchester, 2020) and the #MeToo movement (Intellect, 2019). Her current research focuses on Harold Pinter’s relationship with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). She has recently appeared on BBC 4’s Women’s Hour and public panel discussions at the British Film Institute (BFI) addressing the subject of Pinter’s female characters. Dr Basil Chiasson (University of Leeds) works on Harold Pinter and contemporary British drama and performance. He has published a full-length monograph, The Late Harold Pinter: Political Dramatist, Poet and Activist (Palgrave, 2017) and contributed chapters to The Theatre of Harold Pinter (Bloomsbury, 2014), Harold Pinter’s 'The Dumb Waiter' (Rodopi, 2009), as well as academic journals, such as Modern Drama and The Harold Pinter Review.

• 1. IntroductionDr Catriona Fallow (University of Birmingham) and Dr Basil Chiasson (University of Leeds)Part I: (Re)situating Pinter, Critical Orientations2. First Chapter: ‘Pinter’s Modernism: Stealing Prose to Make a Drama’ Dr Basil Chiasson (University of Leeds, UK)3. Second Chapter: ‘The Theatre of the Absurd as Professional Network in the Early Career of Harold Pinter’Dr Harry Derbyshire (University of Greenwich, UK) 4. Third Chapter: ‘The Elite Pinter and the Pinter Elite’Dr James Hudson (University of Lincoln, UK)5. Fourth Chapter: ‘“Too Much of a Modern?” Pinter’s Jewishness’Professor Eckart Voigts (TU Braunschweig, Germany)6. Fifth Chapter: ‘Harold Pinter, the Peculiar Propagandist: Engaging the Middle East As a Citizen of the World’Professor Ibrahim Yerebakan (Recep Tayyip Erdogan University, Turkey)Part II: Pinter as Playwright, Playwrights and Pinter7. Seventh Chapter: ‘“An insistence in my mind”: Pinter’s Writing Ethic’Steve Waters (University of East Anglia, UK)8. Eighth Chapter: Pinter and the New Writing EcologyDr Catriona Fallow (University of Birmingham, UK)9. Ninth Chapter: ‘Theatre’s Dark Matter: Pinter’s “Staging” of Systemic Violence and its Influence in Contemporary British Theatre’Alex Watson (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)10. Tenth Chapter: ‘For What We Are About to Receive: Pinter, Butterworth, Kelly’Dr David Pattie (University of Birmingham, UK)11. Eleventh Chapter: ‘The Crimpesque: Pinter’s Legacy in the Theatre of Martin Crimp’Dr Maria Elena Capitani (University of Parma, Italy)Part III: Conversations with Collaborators12. Interviews (approximately 3-5) 13. Bibliography

I really like the way the different strands are woven together : reconsideration of Pinter’s status, biographical ( including his Jewishness) and political factors, his relationship with the theatre of his time and his position within the major trends of twentieth century European theatre. The presence of a practising British playwright within the contributors thinking about Pinter’s working methods is very interesting as is the commentary on Pinter’s influence on contemporary playwrights such as Martin Crimp, Dennis Kelly, Jez Butterworth. The final section of proposed interviews will tap into the current revival of interest in Pinter production –the 2018 Bristol Old Vic all-black actors production of The Caretaker and the current high-profile and critically acclaimed season of plays presented at the Pinter Theatre in London are just two examples.