Staging Pinter: Networks, Collaborators, Legacies

Location
George Cadbury Hall - 998 Bristol Road - Selly Oak - B29 6LG
Dates
Friday 6 April (09:00) - Saturday 7 April 2018 (17:00)
staging-pinter

The inaugural conference of Harold Pinter: Histories and Legacies

A two-day international conference at the University of Birmingham

The life and works of Harold Pinter, a pivotal figure in late twentieth-century British theatre, have been widely discussed, debated, and celebrated internationally. This engagement with Pinter has also been reflected in a worldwide ‘Pinter Industry’ in scholarship. In contrast to the focus of much critical work directly on Pinter’s theatrical outputs, ‘Staging Pinter: Networks, Collaborators, Legacies’ invites scholars and practitioners from a range of disciplines to explore a broader series of networks that Pinter produced and engaged with, both as an artist and as a citizen. How do these networks serve to offer us insight into his activity and influence while alive, and how do they continue to reverberate to define his legacy?

‘Networks’ can be understood as an exchange of ideas or practices, or as a system of interconnected people, places, or works. Over five decades, Pinter’s work has traversed various forms and genres across theatre, film, television and radio drama, poetry, prose and political activism. Pinter’s work as an actor and director has also intersected with the work of other writers and artists across a series of venues and within different forms of media. What does an emphasis on the circulation of Pinter’s theatrical work reveal about key productions or texts? How can we better understand Pinter’s practice(s) through the networks of collaboration he established during his lifetime? By tracing the documentation and dissemination of Pinter’s life and work across archival, digital, scholarly, and performance networks, what new perspectives become possible?

The  Harold Pinter: Histories and Legacies Project 

Hosted by the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham, this conference is the first in a series of academic and public events in connection with the Harold Pinter: Histories and Legacies project. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, this project is led by Dr Mark Taylor-Batty from the School of English at the University of Leeds, with co-investigators Professor Jonathan Bignell (Reading) and Professor Graham Saunders (Birmingham). The project explores what performance aesthetics have been attached to Pinter’s work over the course of his career and what impact his work has had on the broader palette of British performance (stage and screen) history since the late 1950s.

To learn more about the project, visit: https://pinterlegacies.com

You can also keep up to date with announcements about the conference and the wider project via Twitter @pinterlegacies or on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pinterlegacies/