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25
In another place and time, I was a student of the theater. Lived it, breathed it hours and hours every week, from an early age through college. In the classes I took and activities I chose. I even muddled through producing The Lion in Winter at Georgetown with Mask and Bauble and spent several weeks at a theater camp in Canada one summer.
I have a lot of unparalleled memories from involvement in theater, like traveling from New Haven to NYC with one of my high school English classes to see Elizabeth Swados‘ Runaways (which starred a teen-aged Diane Lane until she was replaced because she went to work on a movie; this behind the subscription article from the NYT (1978) describes the replacement this way, “Miss Kelly is good but she does not command the absolute stillness and vivid desolation of Miss Lane.”) and learning about the producer Joseph Papp and La Mama.
Some of my closest friends and friends with whom I worked closely from high school and college years went into and remain in professional theater (Michael Suenkel at the Berkeley Rep and Howard Sherman, executive director of the Tony Award Productions – looks like he even authors the American Theatrea Wing’s blog – go Howard!). There are many others sprinkled around the country in big and small roles, like a good friend from high school theater, and another Jill, who has been been putting on plays in her community near Harrisburg, PA.
So when I read about Harold Pinter’s death, I devoured every word, and got swept up in remembering his distinctive style and that of his contemporaries. To people who don’t follow theater that closely, Pinter will be most familiar as the writer of Betrayal, an excellent play that translated fairly well onto screen (1982) with Ben Kingsley and Jeremy Irons (about extramarital affairs but…says the description, it mainly concentrates on her experiences as a woman in the male-dominated media industries” – more things change, more things stay the same?), and as the screenwriter for the movie, The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), a seminal film for Meryl Streep lovers (me).
Harold Pinter was 78 and died after a several year battle against cancer of the esophagus.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 12:18 pm December 25th, 2008 in Culture, RIP
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5 Responses to “RIP, Harold Pinter”
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Ever see the Seinfeld episode that does a parody of Pinter’s Betrayal.
No!!! I am going to have to look for that now! lol thanks! And Merry Christmas.
Check out the IMDB website it has that and some episodes of friends that also play off that film.
thx happy Chanukah
Ha – I found it and watched it. OMG that was very very funny – I didn’t watch Seinfeld much after the first few years (kids’ bedtime I think) but that one definitely showed that it wasn’t totally downhill at all in the latter years. Thanks for the tip.
Tremendously flattered to be mentioned in an obit of Mr. Pinter, Jill. There’s also a pretty decent film version of THE BIRTHDAY PARTY with Robert Shaw — but what your non-theatre readers should really check out is his Nobel acceptance speech.
He was the best. A great loss.