Contextualising the play - A Night Out by Harold Pinter
Stephan Seiler
Contextualising the play
The Playwright (Harold Pinter)
- Harold Pinter was born in the working-class neighbourhood of East London's Hackney in 1930, the son of a Jewish tailor. He evacuated to Cornwall, England, at the outbreak of World War II in 1939, and returned to London when he was 14.
- He began acting in plays at his grammar school, and later received a grant to study at London's prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. He left the school after two years, and spent most of the 1950s writing poetry and acting in small theatre productions.
- In 1957, he wrote his first play, The Room. His first produced play; The Birthday Party came a year later. The reception was unfavourable, it closed within a week, but Pinter's next full-length play, The Caretaker (1960), was more successful.
- The Dumb Waiter also staged in 1960, helped Pinter become more well known. He frequently directed, and sometimes acted in his own work in the 1960s and 1970s. This work was radio, television, and film based.
- Pinter often acted in “who done its?” So this was a major influence in his work to do with gangsters and that lifestyle. He acted for Television drama: -
- A Night Out by Harold Pinter, ABC TV Armchair Theatre, 24 April 1960
- Directed by Philip Saville
(Assheton Gorton – Designer.) Seeley - David Baron [Harold Pinter] - He also acted in films,
- The Servant (Joseph Losey, 1964.) Another cameo appearance for Pinter in this, his first collaboration as screenplay writer with the director Joseph Losey. He played the role of a Society Man in a brief scene.