Harold Pinter, the 2005 Nobel Laureate for Literature, a world-renowned English playwright, screenwriter, actor, director, poet and political activist, died yesterday.
-Playwright Harold Pinter was born in Hackney, London, on 10 October 1930. He was educated at Hackney Downs Grammar School and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and Central School of Speech and Drama.
His plays include The Room (1957), The Birthday Party (1958), The Dumb Waiter (1959), The Caretaker (1960), The Lover (1962), The Homecoming (1965), No Man's Land (1975), Mountain Language (1988), Moonlight (1993), Ashes to Ashes (1996) and Celebration (2000), first performed with The Room at the Almeida Theatre in London. His adaptation of Marcel Proust's novel Remembrance of Things Past was performed at the National Theatre in London in 2000.
He has adapted many of his stage plays for radio and television and he has written the screenplays to a number of films including The Servant (1963), The Quiller Memorandum (1965), The Go-Between (1970), The Last Tycoon (1974) and The Comfort of Strangers (1989), adapted from Ian McEwan's novel. He has directed many productions of his own plays as well as plays by other writers, including James Joyce, Noel Coward, Tennessee Williams, David Mamet and Simon Gray, and has acted on stage, film, television and radio.
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Pinter's dramas often involve strong conflicts among ambivalent characters fighting for verbal and territorial dominance and for their own remembered versions of the past; stylistically, they are marked by theatrical pauses and silences, comedic timing, provocative imagery, witty dialogue, ambiguity, irony, and menace ("Biobibliographical Notes"). Thematically ambiguous, they raise complex issues of individual human identity oppressed by social forces, the power of language, and vicissitudes of memory. Like his work, Pinter has been considered complex and contradictory (Billington, Harold Pinter 388).
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For more information about Harold Pinter and his work, check the wiki site, his official site. To read some of his poems or quotes check this site. There are also thousands of other articles flowing through the internet about him, his decease, describing his amazing work.. Just try to google his name.
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When I was studying the Theatre Theory at uni, Harold Pinter was mentioned all the time during many lessons there. These lessons concerned different theatre movements, different periods of time, and he influenced so many people. Even me.
The master of two silences, the defining playwright of the Theatre of the Absurd movement and the lord of comedy of menace has passed away. Will it be possible to fill the gap he left behind?
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