Inside A.C.T.

By Michael Paller In Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party , Goldberg and McCann arrive at an English seaside boardinghouse in search of a third man—Stanley. Who they are, whom they represent, and why they’ve come for Stanley are mysteries. Into this expositional vacuum rush uncertainty and unease. In Act Two, they subject him to a fierce interrogation, including a series of bewildering questions: “What about the Albigensenist heresy?” “Who watered the wicket in Melbourne? “What about the blessed Oliver Plunkett?” What’s the meaning of this? Is it code? The answer lies in how Pinter’s characters get and deploy power. McCann (Marco Barricelli) and Goldberg (Scott Wentworth) confront Stanley (Firdous Bamji)  in A.C.T.'s production of The Birthday Party . Photo by Kevin Berne. Power isn’t always about physical violence: the knock at the door, the punch to the solar plexus. In Pinter’s plays, power is more often psychological, and words are the weapons. As theater critic Michael B...

By A.C.T. Publications Staff Why is Pinter significant in Western theater? Pinter’s dramatic storytelling was like a shockwave in Western theater. In the 1950s, British and American theaters were filled with dramas that were conversational, genteel, amusing. Pinter’s forceful rhythms, menace, sexuality, sudden humor, and unanswered questions shook audiences awake. Stanley (Firdous Bamji) watches Goldberg (Scott Wentworth) flirt with Lulu (Julie Adamo) in A.C.T.'s production of  The Birthday Party . Photo by Kevin Berne. Why is power so important in Pinter’s work? Pinter saw drama as a zero-sum game. In every scene, there is a winner and a loser, and the characters onstage know it. This sense of competition—between husband and wife, master and servant, or two hitmen hired to do a job—runs like a spinal cord throughout the playwright’s work. In his own life, the playwright was only too aware of the misuses of power; as a young Jewish man growing up in 1930s London, ...

By Elspeth Sweatman Bursting onto the theatrical scene in the 1950s, Pinter radically changed storytelling on the Western stage. In his 29 plays and 23 screenplays, he explored universal themes of loyalty, friendship, memory, communication, and the thin line between the personal and the political, transforming the language of east London into a unique poetry. He “took the narration out of theater,” says American playwright David Mamet, “and put the poetry back.” Study for a portrait of Harold Pinter. Graphite drawing, 2008, by Reginald Gray.  Photo by Reginald Gray. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.   Pinter was born on October 10, 1930, in Hackney, a working-class suburb in east London. Despite having a large extended family, he was an only child who could often be found daydreaming alone under the backyard lilac tree. This Eden came crashing down in 1939 with the outbreak of World War II. At the age of nine, Pinter found himself on a train to rural Cornwall wi...

For those of you whose interest was piqued by our last post , you can now listen to the “Pursuing Pinter” panel discussion online! Just click here (and scroll down to the bottom of the screen). — The A.C.T. Intern Blog Quadrumvirate “Pursuing Pinter” panelists, March 20, 2011: (L to R) A.C.T. Resident Dramaturg Michael Paller, KQED Forum’s Michael Krasny, A.C.T. Artistic Director Carey Perloff, and Columbia University’s Austin E. Quigley. Photo by Tom Chargin.

posted by Zachary Moull,  A.C.T. Dramaturgy Fellow  The late, great Harold Pinter, Nobel laureate and one of the 20th century’s most influential playwrights, died of cancer in 2008. Since then, A.C.T. Artistic Director Carey Perloff has been searching for the perfect opportunity to commemorate Pinter, with whom she worked closely for many years . On March 20, during the run of her own production of Pinter’s play The Homecoming , the A.C.T. community finally came together for an event that became known internally as the “Pinter Celebration.” Our goal was to create a space for theatergoers and -makers in the Bay Area to gather together and share their appreciation for the life and work of this extraordinary artist. —The A.C.T. Intern Blog Quadrumvirate The celebration began after the Sunday matinee performance of The Homecoming with “Pursuing Pinter,” a roundtable discussion among Perloff, Michael Krasny of San Francisco State University and KQED’s Forum , and noted Pinter...

posted by  Zachary Moull,   A.C.T. Dramaturgy Fellow  Dramaturgy Fellow Zach Moull had the privilege of sitting in on rehearsals of The Homecoming , Harold Pinter’s masterpiece of family warfare, which opens at the American Conservatory Theater this week. The play is thick with sex and menace; to create an atmosphere that would help the actors bring those qualities to life, director Carey Perloff made an unorthodox choice in the rehearsal room. —The A.C.T. Intern Blog Quadrumvirate Preparing Pinter’s The Homecoming For more than four weeks, the cast of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming rehearsed in the dark. The play, set entirely within the confines of an East London house, calls for little natural light. The action largely occurs in the evening or at dawn, and the central scenes of the first act—in which Teddy and Ruth arrive at the house unannounced— take place in the dead of night. So before rehearsals began, director Carey Perloff asked the stage-management team...

Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming begins rehearsal at A.C.T. this week with Artistic Director Carey Perloff at the helm. This is not the first Pinter-Perloff production, not by a long shot. Perloff’s relationship with the Nobel Prize–winning British playwright began in 1988, when she staged The Birthday Party for Classic Stage Company in New York. Pinter was so impressed by the production that he invited Perloff to direct the American premiere of Mountain Language at CSC soon after. She went on to direct a 1990 Mark Taper Forum production of The Collection , a 1998 A.C.T. production of Old Times , and a 2001 A.C.T. production of The Room and The Celebration (another American premiere), which had its first preview performance, a profoundly moving experience for all present, two nights after 9/11. A.C.T.’s relationship goes back even further—to 1984, when A.C.T. founder William Ball directed Old Times . When Pinter died in 2008, Perloff wrote a moving essay about Pinter and his lega...

posted by Lesley Gibson, A.C.T. Blog Editor On December 24, Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter died in London at the age of 78. A.C.T. Artistic Director Carey Perloff—a longtime friend and collaborator of the playwright—reflected on the life and work of a man who revolutionized modern theater in yesterday’s issue of the San Francisco Chronicle . A.C.T. deeply mourns the passing of this great artist. Our best to all of you in the New Year.