The turning point was getting my own play, Wetwork, published in 2014. It was basically a love letter to Pinter's, The Dumb Waiter. Two men in an undisclosed location, waiting for their next assignment, before everything goes pair shaped.
Harold Pinter wrote The Dumb Waiter in 1957, his own love letter to the likes of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. In Pinter's play, much like Becket's 'Godot', he explores the human condition and it's context within a world devoid of meaning.
Another heavy influence on Pinter at the time was Vaudeville and the 'routines' that would be played out as a series of encounters. This is apparent in The Dumb Waiter, with the two characters Ben and Gus playing out a series of encounters within the play, which bring the audience in on the story from the point of view of Gus, but leaves Ben's objective obscure, until the very end of the play.
The Dumb Waiter was my first choice to direct, as I always enjoyed the simplicity of the play, which creates a complex idea of how two people interact when one is aware of the others unavoidable outcome.
To compliment The Dumb Waiter, I chose Pinter's The Lover. Another two hander which again explores the human condition, but this time, in a very different way.
The 'lovers' Richard and Sarah play out a fantasy within their marital state, with Pinter using the absence of dialogue as much as it's presence to convey to the audience a perspective of what is happening between this seemingly normal couple. It's a wonderful play that can tell you what the characters are thinking by what they don't say, but also has great dialogue that can be played for its humour or more darker tones.
I can best describe the play as a flirtatious game of cat and mouse, but who is the cat and who is the mouse?!
One of the biggest draws of Pinter's work is that his plays can be interpreted in a multitude of ways. Once, when asked by an audience member the meaning of one of his plays they had just watched, his response was simply, 'Mind your own business'!
I have just given my take on the plays above, but someone else could take a completely different meaning away with them. This freedom of interpretation allows the audience member to view Pinter's plays in a context which may not be apparent to the person sat next to them. It also allowed Pinter a freedom to write without the constraints of modern storytelling, withholding information about characters and motives that would prompt an audience to try and fill in the blanks.
I have been lucky enough to secure a fantastic cast, who are all keen and hungry to delve into the obscure and enigmatic world of Harold Pinter.
I can't wait to get stuck into rehearsals and hopefully do justice to the plays of, in my opinion, one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th Century.