Harold Pinter:

The experiment with his Plays on Gujarati Stage

Dr. Dilip. P. Barad
Senior Lecturer
Department of English
Bhavnagar University
Bhavnagar.
_________________________

Gujarat Sahitya Academy and Sater Theatre, Department of Dramatics,

Faculty of Performing Arts, M.S. University jointly organized a unique workshop
cum seminar on Pinter, Gujarati ma. This article is the outcome of the experiment I
observed on stage. What I have conceptualized is that the concept of literature
changes as language changes. This concept changes because language is culture
specific. The absurdity of English or French or any other European language, when
translated in any of the Indian languages, more specifically Gujarati, it becomes
meaningful absurdity. If Absurd is meaningless, nothingness, illogical, senseless &
farcical, then on Gujarati stage, as the text traveled from pages to stages, it became
full of meaning, something significant, logical, and genuinely serious.

Theater of the Absurd1, term used to identify a body of plays written primarily
in France from the mid-1940s through the 1950s. These works usually employ
illogical situations, unconventional dialogue, and minimal plots to express the
apparent absurdity of human existence. French thinkers such as Albert Camus and
Jean-Paul Sartre used the term absurd in the 1940s in recognition of their inability to
find any rational explanation for human life. The term described what they understood
as the fundamentally meaningless situation of humans in a confusing, hostile, and
indifferent world.

British scholar Martin Esslin first used the phrase “theater of the absurd” in a
1961 critical study of several contemporary dramatists, including Irish-born
playwright Samuel Beckett and French playwrights Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet, and
1
The expression in art of the meaninglessness of human existence. Originating in France in the early
1950s, it is explored in Camus' Le Mythe de Sysiphe (1942, The Myth of Sisyphus), where human
efforts are seen as pointless but compulsory. Its potential for comedy and terror has been exploited
especially in the theatre (Theatre of the Absurd), as in the plays of Ionesco, Beckett, Albee, Stoppard,
and Pinter.

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Arthur Adamov. These writers reacted against traditional Western theatrical
conventions, rejecting assumptions about logic, characterization, language, and plot.2

Harold Pinter is also infuenced by theatre of the absurd and more specifically
by Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot. Harold Pinter, born in 1930, English
playwright, known for his so-called comedies of menace, which humorously and
cynically depict people attempting to communicate as they react to an invasion or
threat of an invasion of their lives. He is also noted for his unique use of dialogue,
which exposes his characters’ alienation from each other and explores the layers of
meaning produced by pauses and silence.

In 2005, Harold Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the highest
honour available to any writer in the world. In announcing the award, Horace
Engdahl, Chairman of the Swedish Academy, said that Pinter was an artist “who in
his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into
oppression’s closed rooms”.

In 1958 Harold Pinter wrote the following:

"There are 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.3"

Pinter has written twenty-nine plays including The Birthday Party, The Caretaker,
The Slight Ache, and The Dumb Waiter, twenty-one screenplays including The
Servant, The Go-Between and The French Lieutenant's Woman, and directed twenty-
seven theatre productions, including James Joyce's Exiles, David Mamet's Oleanna,
seven plays by Simon Gray and many of his own plays including his latest,
Celebration, paired with his first, The Room at The Almeida Theatre, London in the
spring of 2000.

2
2. Encarta encyclopedia. 2007.
3
www.haroldpinter.org

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 About the meaning in his plays, he once said, when he was awarded the
German Shakespeare Prize in 1070, “I can sum up none of my plays. I can describe
none of them, except to say: That is what happened. That is what they said. That is
what they did.”

Michael Billington wrote in his biography of Pinter in 1997, “You can't easily
sum Pinter up in a journalistic phrase, though many have tried with tags such as
'Master of the Pause' or 'Comedy of Menace'; but if I had to describe him to someone
totally unfamiliar with his work it would be as an instinctively radical poet whose
chosen medium is drama.”

David Hare wrote in Harold Pinter:A Celebration4 : “"Pinter did what Auden
said a poet should do. He cleaned the gutters of the English language, so that it ever
afterwards flowed more easily and more cleanly. We can also say that over his work
and over his person hovers a sort of leonine, predatory spirit which is all the more
powerful for being held under in a rigid discipline of form, or in a black suit...The
essence of his singular appeal is that you sit down to every play he writes in certain
expectation of the unexpected. In sum, this tribute from one writer to another: you
never know what the hell's coming next."

Thus to say in few words about the chief characteristics of his plays, we may
say that, his plays are the plays of:
• No plot, no action
• Menacing effect of pause and silence
• Disfigured and fragmented dialogues and language
• Recurring symbols of reading news papers, shoes, etc
The four plays which were performed in this workshop cum seminar and are
under discussion in this article are:
• The Birthday Party: Translated by Prof. Jyoti Vaidya: Directed by
prof. Sonal Vaidya-Kulkarni
• The Caretaker: Ramji Hirji Parmar: Transcreated by Dr. Mahesh
Champaklal: Directed by Shri Kapildev Shukla

4
Faber and Faber 2000 p 21

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 • The Dumb Waiter: Tray:Translated by Dr. Lavkumar Desai: Directed
by Prof. Vrundavan Vaidya
• A Slight Ache: Bhamri: Translated by Prf. Satish Vyas: Directed by
Prof. Prabhakar Dabhade.

The stage performance in Gujarati language of all these plays created not
only new text but gave new meaning to Harold Pinter’s meaningless theatre of
menace. The absurdity of west got new meaning in this experiment of performing
theatre of absurd in Gujarati.
The forming of new text with new meaning took place at, at least, two levels,
viz., first when the translators translated it into Gujarati language and secondly when
directors directed the play.
Coming to the observation of the changing concepts in literature (of getting
new meaning in the meaningless absurd play of Pinter), let me start with the first play,
The Birthday Party.
In this play, the central character Stanley is named summer. Summer is the
cruelest month for us. Summer in the play is also evil and sinister. He is always hiding
something from the others and on the night of birthday party, his attempt to kill Magi
and rape Lili are the examples of his morbid and malicious mentality. But, Pinter’s
Stanley is not so evil. Stanley is stainless. He is, perhaps, an artist. He symbolizes
artist’s escapism from the reality and society. Society drags him back into main
currents. To Pinter it is Nat Goldberg (Harbans) and Dermont McCann (Yakub) who
are more sinister and symbolizes menace in his play. The two strangers in Pinter are
Jews whereas; they are Sikh and Muslim in Gujarati version. They represents that in
the collective consciousness of Gujaratis (Indians, in general), they are the symbols of
menace and threat to peace and security.
In the Tray, one of the best things to happen is the change in the end of the
play. In Pinter, both the tramps, Gus and Ben points gun at each other and the
symbolic meaning is one of the tramp is informed to kill the other. Nothing really
happens and the curtain falls. In the Gujarati stage performance, young director Prof,
Vrundavan Vaidya, made both these actors walk into the audience and the stage is
empty when curtain falls. The symbolic effect is more poignant. The door is also
symbolic of Pinter’s play. Here the way two character walk in the two opposite

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direction into the audience symbolically opens the doors, the doors of interpretations
and new meanings. The door in Pinter is symbolic of menace and hidden fear; fear of
someone coming in this isolated world from outside. This symbol is broken and doors
are wide open in Gujarati stage performance. The menace is broken, the fear is
conquered.
In Ramji Hirji Parmar (The Caretaker), Dr. Mahesh Champaklal has done
wonderful transcreation. His is not a mere translation. He has re-created Pinter’s The
Caretaker. His giving dalit name to the caretaker and his attempt to change his name
to Ramji Pasa Patel and then his desire to return back to his own identity is extremely
symbolic in our context. There is a statue of Lord Buddha used by Pinter, which
remains in this play as it is. It is thrown on the floor and broken into pieces. The
breaking of the icon of Buddha and a dalit central character makes this play more
significant and relevant than Pinter’s The Caretaker in contemporary Indian state of
affairs. It really gives new interpretation and concept in how new texts are created in
transcreation.
In the stage performance of A Slight Ache : Bhamari, the match seller is
brought on the stage and this character helps in giving new concept to this radio play.
One of the main themes involves one's insecurity about threats to one's self-identity
embodied in the character of the matchseller, of whom one of the other two
characters, Edward, is utterly terrified. Not only does the Matchseller appear to
Edward as a threat to his masculinity, as a potential rival who will steal his wife,
Flora, but the Matchseller also serves as a reminder of Edward's destiny. The play is
about the threat of an "Other" and the threat of growing old. It suggests that through
spending too long fearing and guarding against these things, paranoia can become a
genuine and terrifying reality. This ache of the terror of future creates an environment
of menace in Pinter’s play. Whereas, in Bhamari, the new title ‘Bhamari’ is also
differently symbolic. The sting of bug/fly is at first not so painful or acute. But as the
time passes, the sting aches & burns. Its intensity grows with the passage of time. And
this is movingly expressed by the actors and by director of the play (by bringing
matchseller on the stage).
The other very important aspect of Pinter is his language. The language is
fragmented. Language is symbolic of disfigured life. It is representing the ache of
modernism – the ache of generation who lived and experienced the encroachment of
science over religion (Darwin’s Origin of Species), existentialist dilemma and the

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pangs of two world wars. These embittered the thinking mind. It created lacuna in
communication. The speech became fragmented and scrappy. Disjointed existence of
life found its utterance is such a language and so dialogues of Pinter are more in form
of questions and answers which are all meaning less. Then, there are long pauses and
silences. There are two silences in Pinter. One when no word is spoken. The other
when perhaps a torrent of language is being employed. This speech is speaking of a
language locked beneath it. That is its continual reference. The speech we hear is an
indication of that which we don't hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly,
anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its place. When true
silence falls we are still left with echo but are nearer to nakedness. One way of
looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.
Anther important aspect of dialogues is that they are comic and amusing. No
doubt, the laughter generated is not genial and bright laughter, its cynic and dark
humour.
Now, in the Gujarati experiment, surprisingly enough, there is no effect of this
sort. Pauses and silences are there, but not communicating the effect of menace as it is
found in Pinter. Language, instead of being fragmented and disjointed, is rhythmic
and poetic. The dialogues are not comical and amusing. They do not generate
laughter. Barely a smile comes on the lips while viewing these plays in Gujarati.
It is because of these that absurdity is not created on the stage and instead, it
finds new meaning in the meaninglessness of theater of menace. Event he translators
and directors have agreed to this failure. Well, but I would not call it a failure. It is
successful creation of new text. It is for this that stage performance is not mere
translation of Pinter, but it is transcreation on Pinter with Gujarati consciousness.
Shri Hasmukh Baradi, renowned critic of drama and Dr. Mahesh Champaklal
agreed that it is not possible for us to create theatre of absurd or menace in our
context. After all, we have not experienced cultural crisis. For ‘them’ God no more
existed, for ‘us’ He is never dead. Darwin’s scientific revelation, existential
philosophers and psychological studies shook the land on which ‘they’ were standing.
‘Their’ order of existence crumbled down. ‘We’ and our culture have experienced
such shocks from Mughals and British Raj but our roots are unmoved. We are not
fragmented into pieces. We have not faced the problem of ‘no-comunication’. Our
speech was never disjointed, neither was our existence.

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 With this difference in the collective consciousness of ‘their’ thinker –creative
genius and that of ‘ours’, there is no doubt, that we fail to create absurdity on our
stage. We fail to translate absurdity into our language. Language is culture specific.
This cultural specificity of language plays vital role in it. Language carries the culture
of the nation. After all, we believe that God is here (in our heart), they believe that
God is either there (in the heaven) or He is nowhere.
I would like to end this article with a very precise observation of Shri
Hasmukh Baradi. In the concluding session of this workshop, he mentioned that 20th
century European literature, including Theatre of Absurd, is the outcome of the
progression of repentance, the repentance of the sin, the sin of guilty consciousness.
These white men in the name of ‘white man’s burden’ to civilize the world, exploited,
tortured and tormented human beings. This guilty consciousness agonized them.
Distress, anxiety, alienation, grief, angst, sorrow etc captured their creative mind, and
the result is absurdity in literature. Indian, or for that matter Gujarati, creative mind
has never encountered such crisis in their experience. Thus there is no absurdity in
their creative thinking, and hence forth, no absurdity in our literature.
We can say that, theatre of absurd on Gujarati stage has following
characteristics:
• Language is rhythmic & poetic, instead of disfragmented,
• Characters are meaningful & relevant, instead of meaningless,
• Relationships are not found broken. Two brothers in Ramji Hirji
Parmar, Husband-wife in Bhamari and The Birthday Party and tramps in The Tray
are more near to each other and it seems there is no such breach among them.
Thus, to conclude, we can say that such experiments on Gujarati stage gives
new concept to world literature. Absurd, the way it was, can never be created in our
literature. But when attempted, it really gives new meanings to it.

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