Line #32 Creator/HaroldPinter


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/haroldpinter_58febe763df78ca1596565851.jpg]]
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3	Harold Pinter [[UsefulNotes/KnightFever CBE]] (10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright who was really known for one thing above all others.
4
5	''([[{{Beat}} pause]])''
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7	The pause. He put it in his first playscript and it became a very big thing, though he was never quite sure why.
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9	His plays tend to involve very normal, [[RandomEventsPlot slice of life stories]] of characters acting slightly absurdly, often including very dysfunctional families/relationships. Often his plays occur in real time - 70 minutes on stage is 70 minutes in the script. The realism that he brought to the stage was jarring and unnerving to an audience, and in a way could be related to the sort of thing that Chekhov had done in Russia decades before. When someone says 'please pass the salt' they inevitably mean 'our marriage is a sham and I hate you'.
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11	He writes dialogue characterised by frequent [[ParrotExposition repetition and questioning]].\
12	Does he?\
13	He does.\
14	Oh yes. I guess he does.\
15	You guess?\
16	Oh yes. VideoGame/MetalGear?!\
17
18	...and so on.
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20	He says he drew inspiration from Creator/SamuelBeckett. In fact, he wrote a lengthy defence of Beckett's ''Theatre/WaitingForGodot'' without even having seen it. Both writers, among others, are considered defining playwrights of the [[{{Absurdism}} Theatre of the Absurd]]. Pinter's repetitious and nearly [[SeinfeldianConversation Seinfeldian]] dialogue, as well as the simultaneously [[BlackComedy menacing and funny]] tone of his plays are common features of absurdist theatre. His plays tend to function as both literal and metaphor open to interpretation and are rarely overt in theme.
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22	Pinter was an actor and a writer and in his later years a highly political poet and activist but it is for his plays of the late fifties and sixties that he will most be remembered. This particular style of theatre is known as 'Pinteresque', a word he detested and claimed not to understand.
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24	Pinter won the UsefulNotes/NobelPrizeInLiterature in 2005.
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26	[[AC: Notable plays written by Harold Pinter include;]]
27	* ''The Room'' (no, not [[Film/TheRoom2003 that one]])
28	* ''Theatre/TheBirthdayParty''
29	* ''The Hothouse''
30	* ''The Dumb Waiter''
31	* ''Old Times''
32	* ''The Homecoming''
33	* ''Theatre/{{Betrayal}}''
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35	He also wrote screenplays, most famously three film collaborations with an American exile Creator/JosephLosey, including ''Film/TheServant'', ''Accident'' and an adaptation of ''Literature/TheGoBetween''. In addition to this, he wrote ''Literature/TheFrenchLieutenantsWoman'' and ''Literature/TheHandmaidsTale'', and occasionally acted (he appears in film versions of ''Theatre/{{Wit}}'' and ''Literature/MansfieldPark'').
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37	[[AC:Tropes common to Pinter's work include:]]
38	* {{Beat}} (The "Pinter pause")
39	* BackToFront (''Betrayal'')
40	* BlackComedy
41	* DeadpanSnarker
42	* DownerEnding
43	* EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory [[invoked]]
44	* {{Jerkass}}
45	* MindScrew
46	* NoEnding (''The Dumb Waiter'' and ''Old Times'')
47	* UsefulNotes/OedipusComplex (''The Homecoming'')
48	* ParrotExposition
49	* RealisticDictionIsUnrealistic
50	* SeinfeldianConversation
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Context Creator / HaroldPinter