From Writing for the Theatre, 1962

Im not a theorist. Im not an authoritative or reliable commentator on the dramatic scene, the
social scene, any scene. I write plays, when I can manage it, and thats all. Thats the sum of it.
So Im speaking with some reluctance, knowing that there are at least twenty-four possible
aspects of any single statement, depending on where youre standing at the time or on what the
weathers like.
It took me quite a while to grow used to the fact that critical and public response in the theatre
follows a very erratic temperature chart. And the danger for a writer is where he becomes easy
prey for the old bugs of apprehension and expectation in this connection. But I think Dsseldorf
cleared the air for me. In Dsseldorf about two years ago I took, as is the Continental custom, a
bow with a German cast of The Caretaker at the end of the play on the first night. I was at once
booed violently by what must have been the finest collection of booers in the world. I thought
they were using megaphones, but it was pure mouth. The cast was as dogged as the audience,
however, and we took thirty-four curtain calls, all to boos. By the thirty-fourth there were only
two people left in the house, still booing. I was strangely warmed by all this, and now, whenever
I sense a tremor of the old apprehension or expectation, I remember Dsseldorf, and am cured.
Ive never started a play from any kind of abstract idea or theory and never envisaged my own
characters as messengers of death, doom, heaven or the milky way or, in other words, as
allegorical representations of any particular force, whatever that may mean.
I suggest there can be no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between
what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true
and false. A character on the stage who can present no convincing argument or information as to
his past experience, his present behaviour or his aspirations, nor give a comprehensive analysis
of his motives is as legitimate and as worthy of attention as one who, alarmingly, can do all these
things. The more acute the experience the less articulate its expression.
Language is a highly ambiguous business. So often, below the word spoken, is the thing
known and unspoken. My characters tell me so much and no more, with reference to their
experience, their aspirations, their motive, their history. Between my lack of biographical data
about them and the ambiguity of what they say lies a territory which is not only worthy of
exploration but which it is compulsory to explore. You and I, the characters which grow on a
page, most of the time were inexpressive, giving little away, unreliable, elusive, evasive,
obstructive, unwilling. But its out of these attributes that a language arises. A language, I repeat,
where under what is said, another thing is being said.
We have heard many times that tired, grimy phrase: Failure of communication and this
phrase has been fixed to my work quite consistently. I believe the contrary. I think that we
communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that what takes place is a

continual evasion, desperate rear-guard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. Communication

is too alarming. To enter into someone elses life is too frightening. To disclose to tohers the
poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility. I am not suggesting that no character in a play
can ever say what he in fact means. Not at all. I have found that there invariably does come a
moment when this happens, when he says something, perhaps, which he has never said before.
And where this happens, what he says is irrevocable, and can never be taken back.

From A Conversation [Pause] With Harold Pinter,

An interview with Mel Gussow

HP: I must admit that I also tend to get quite exhausted about being this Harold Pinter fellow.
This is quite apart from being me. Harold Pinter sits on my damn back.
MG: Whos Harold Pinter?
HP: Hes not me. Hes someone elses creation. Its very curious. Quite often when people shake
me warmly by the hand and say theyre pleased to meet me I have very mixed feelingsbecause
Im not quite sure who it is they think theyre meeting. In fact, who they are meeting at all. I
cant explain it very well. I sometimes feel in others an awful kind of respect which distresses
me.
MG: That must be off-putting.
HP: Yes, it is.
MG: What do they expect? A proper phrase or a certain kind of appearance?
HP: Most of them expect me to be a cripple, of course.
MG: A psychological cripple?
HP: No, a physical cripple [laughs].
What Im interested in is emotion which is contained, and I felt very, very deeply. Jesus, I really
dont want to make a categorical statement about this. But, perhaps, it is ultimately inexpressible.
Because I think we express our emotions in so many small ways, all over the placeor cant
express them in any other way.
In Boston, Elliot Norton, whom I respect as a critic, liked the first act of The Homecoming very
much and didnt like the second act very much. Someone actually said to me, What are you
going to do about the second act? Elliot Norton didnt like it. I said, Im not going to do
anything about the second act. The second act is the second act.
Oh, no. These pauses and silences! Ive been appalled. Occasionally when Ive run into groups
of actors, normally abroad, they say a silence is obviously longer than a pause. Right. O.K., so it
is. Theyll say, this is a pause, so well stop. And after the pause well start again. Im sure this
happens all over the place and thank goodness I dont know anything about it. From my point of
view, these are not in any sense a formal kind of arrangement. The pause is a pause becomes of
what has just happened in the minds and guts of the characters. They spring out of the text.
Theyre not formal conveniences or stresses by t part of the body of the action. Im simply
suggesting that if they play it properly they will find that a pauseor whatever the hell it isis
inevitable. And a silence equally means that something has happened to create the impossibility
of anyone speaking for a certain amount of timeuntil they can recover from whatever
happened before the silence.