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In Tampa, a Nobel celebration

The thrill of Harold Pinter's prize in literature spreads to the University of Tampa, home of a journal devoted to the activist playwright's work.

By COLETTE BANCROFT
Published October 14, 2005

When British playwright Harold Pinter got a call Thursday at his London home from someone at the Nobel Foundation, asking for his response to the news he had just won the Nobel Prize for literature, he said, "I've been absolutely speechless. . . . I can't really articulate what I feel."

It was an apt answer from the man whose plays are famed for their freighted and ominous silences. But his friend Frank Gillen had plenty to say.

Gillen, the Dana Professor of English at the University of Tampa, is co-founder and co-editor of the Pinter Review, the only scholarly journal devoted entirely to Pinter's work.

"I'm so incredibly happy for him," said Gillen, who has known Pinter since 1987.

Pinter, 75, has long been recognized as one of the finest and most influential playwrights of the latter half of the 20th century. In plays like The Caretaker, The Homecoming and Betrayal, he has perfected a style sometimes called the comedy of menace, drama that focuses on our profound human need to communicate - and the profound difficulties of doing so.

Born in London in 1930, the son of a Jewish dressmaker, Pinter was evacuated from the city in 1939 after the outbreak of World War II and spent several years separated from his family, an experience he has said influenced his work.

As a young man, Pinter studied acting and toured with repertory companies. "He's a tremendous actor. He was in those touring companies that do two or three Shakespeare plays a week," Gillen says. "He knows every line of Shakespeare."

Soon Pinter began writing plays, influenced by such modern writers as James Joyce and Samuel Beckett.

In 1957, one of his earliest plays, The Birthday Party, closed in less than a week. Gillen says Pinter tells the story of going to see a performance and finding only about six people in the theater.

When an usher refused to let him sit in the balcony, Pinter told him, "I'm the author of the play."

The usher said, "Oh, I am sorry."

His breakthrough play was The Caretaker (1959), a sinister three-person drama about identity and dominance. A hit 2003 Broadway production starred Patrick Stewart and Kyle Maclachlan.

Pinter's work has influenced countless playwrights and screenwriters, notably David Mamet, Sam Shepherd and Neil Labute.

In addition to more than two dozen plays, Pinter has written a number of screenplays, some drawn from his plays, such as Betrayal, some from the works of other writers, such as The French Lieutenant's Woman, based on John Fowles' novel. He also has directed many plays and several films and continued to act.

The Nobel committee awarded him the prize for his plays, saying in its statement, "Pinter restored theatre to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue where people are at the mercy of each other and pretence crumbles."

In his first public comments Thursday, outside his London home, Pinter said he was done writing drama: "I've written 29 plays, and I think that's probably enough."

For the last five years, his passions have been poetry and politics. An outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, he was one of a group of celebrities who last year called on British Prime Minister Tony Blair to resign.

Pinter called Blair "pathetic" and the war "a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law."

On Thursday, Blair's spokesman said, "Of course we would congratulate Harold Pinter on the recognition that he has received." He declined to say whether Pinter would be invited to Downing Street.

Gillen says Pinter's political activism is "very consistent" with his work as a playwright.

"The major metaphor of his work is people in a room, the room of a person who is dominant in some way, trying to negotiate how they can live in a free way.

"That's the deeper meaning of his silences. He's been writing politically all along."

Pinter is not the only critic of the Iraq war to earn a Nobel nod this year, either. The International Atomic Energy Agency and its director, Mohamed ElBaradei, who contradicted the Bush administration's insistence that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons, won the Nobel Peace Prize last week.

When Gillen first wrote a letter nominating Pinter for the Nobel, he published it in the 1997-98 edition of the Pinter Review. He cited Pinter's consistent expression of "the struggle of individuals and peoples to find an independent voice in a world dominated politically, militarily, economically and perhaps through the mass media even culturally" by superpowers.

In 2002, he received a letter from the entire Nobel committee, inviting him to nominate "a person" for the literature prize. "I was enjoined to secrecy, but I can talk about it now," he says.

The Pinter Review has published several of Pinter's antiwar poems. Thanks to Pinter's friendship with Gillen, the journal has an unusual degree of access to the playwright's work. It has published not only scholarly analyses of the plays and articles by such literary lights as Edward Albee and Margaret Atwood, but first drafts of some of his works, offering a rare look into the revision process.

Gillen hopes to organize an event at UT to recognize Pinter's Nobel prize, although it is "too soon to know what."

On Thursday afternoon, Gillen was hoping to hear from Pinter. "I talked to his secretary. Of course everyone is calling him."

Pinter celebrated his 75th birthday Monday and has had health issues recently. He had surgery for cancer of the esophagus in 2002, and when he spoke to the press after the award announcement, he wore bandages and used a cane because of a recent fall.

But, despite Pinter's momentary silence Thursday morning, Gillen expects his voice will continue to be heard and his plays will continue to be performed.

"He changed drama forever."

Information from Times wires was used in this report. Colette Bancroft can be reached at 727 893-8435 or bancroft@sptimes.com

[Last modified October 14, 2005, 01:41:14]