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Harold Pinter: Stage to Screen

Of the many hats he has worn with great success (playwright, actor, activist), Harold Pinter’s accomplishments as a screenwriter provide the focus for this series. Following the success of his plays The Caretaker and The Birthday Party in the late 1950s, Pinter began a long and prolific career in film, notably in collaboration with London-based American expatriate director Joseph Losey.  These psychological dramas – The Servant (1963), Accident (1967), and The Go-Between (1970)– served as a striking counter-narrative to the prevailing kitchen sink realism which dominated British art cinema in the 1960s. In the 1970s, Pinter collaborated with the American Film Theatre, directing Simon Gray’s Butley and adapting his own play, The Homecoming (1973), with director Peter Hall. Pinter’s scripts for Betrayal (1981) and The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1983) were also highly regarded for their innovative, unconventional narrative structures. Inspired by the American Repertory Theatre’s new production of Pinter’s No Man’s Land, this retrospective reveals another intriguing facet in the career of this fascinating and complex artist.

This series is co-presented with the American Repertory Theater, presenting a new production of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land, running May 12-June 10.