Provocation(s): Pinter, Politics, and Spectatorship

Abstract

What, precisely, makes Harold Pinter’s so-called political plays political? It is customary to associate plays such as One for the Road, Mountain Language, Party Time, and Ashes to Ashes with real political failures that occur outside the theater. This presentation experiments with the opposite approach. Drawing on archival evidence that describes how audience members responded to Mountain Language and Ashes to Ashes, “Provocation(s): Pinter, Politics, and Spectatorship” entertains the possibility that Pinter critiques the conditions that make spectatorship possible.