Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter was born in 1930 and died in 2008.  Pinter was a very famous English playwright in addition to a screewriter, actor, director, poet, author, and a political activist.  He began his theatrical career in the middle 1950s as an actor and used the stage name David Baron.  

Over his lifetime, Pinter produced 29 original stage plays, 2

7 screenplays, several dramatic sketches, radio and TV plays, poetry, one novel, short fiction, essays, speeches, and letters.  In addition to producing, he directed nearly 50 stage, television, and film productions, as well as acted in radio, stage, television, and film productions of his works as well as others.  "Pinter's dramas often involve strong conflicts among ambivalent characters who struggle for verbal and territorial dominance and for their own versions of the past; stylistically, these works marked by theatrical pauses and silences, comedic timing, irony, and menace."  

In the middle 1980s, Pinter took a new direction incorporating political interests into his personal life.  He was greatly recognized for his cultural influence and achievements across genres and media.  Pinter had many memories from when he was growing up of having to evacuate his family home.  "Prime memories of evacuation being of loneliness, bewilderedness, separation and loss: themes that carry throughout his works."

Awards:

Pinter received the Nobel Prize in Literature

20 honorary degrees

Training and Experience:

- 1948 attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art

- 1949 dropped out

- 1949-1950 role in Dick Whittington and His Cat

- 1951 six months in Central School of Speech and Drama

- 1951-1952 toured Ireland with Anew McMaster

- 1952 began acting in England

- 1953-1954 worked for Donald Wolfit Company

- 1954-1959 Acted under stage name David Baron

Some of Pinter's works:

The Room- Pinter's first play in 1957

Pinter as an actor:

The Servant (1963)

Turtle Diary (1985)

Accident (1967)

The Tailor of Panama (2001)

Beckett On Film (2001)

Pinter as a director:

The Homecoming (1965)

Life Support (1997)

The Late Middle Class (1999)

The Old Masters (2004)

Twelve Angry Men (1996)

In 2001, Pinter was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer and passed away in 2008.  

Source

August Strindberg

August Strindberg was not only a playwright but also famous as a Swedish painter, and sculptor as well as a playwright. He had no art training, but learned from artist friends after abandoning his studies at the University of Uppsala in 1872. After he stopped painting he became Sweden's leading are critic and the ideological leader of the radical Swedish artists' movement. During this time, he was producing sketches in words and pictures as illustrations to his own writings. The Red Room, was Sweden's first realistic novel, a scandal that made him famous overnight. Later, however, he began to make enemies, especially when he went into history-writing from a radical point of view. Soon after The Red Room was produced, he came up with another, The New Kingdom, which was much more bitter and personal than The Red Room, which stirred up lots of hostility. He then left Sweden with his family, but before he left he published a collection of angry poems which, in form and style, were completely new in Swedish literature.
In 1884 Strindberg published a collection of stories, which reflected their bold treatment of sexual matters the influence of French naturalism. However, what struck the public was the evidence in the stories of Strindberg's hatred of the feminist moverment and the emancipated women. Because of his strong opinions, Strindberg lost the support of many liberal friends.  Up until Strindberg's death in 1912, he wrote 29 plays, a large amount of poetry, and close to 15 volumes of prose. The most important plays of his last period, which was also the expressionistic period, are To Damascus I-II (1898-1904), There Are Crimes and Crimes (1899), Easter (1901), The Dance of Death (1901), Crown Bride (1902), A Dream Play.  In addition to his collection of poetry, he also wrote several historical dramas, the best which is Gustaf Vasa, and The Great Highway (1909).

Of his speeches or prose work, were his personal novels Alone (1903) and The Scapegoat (1907) as well as one of his diary's.  Strindberg's last years were rather calm beside the "feud" novel Svarta fanor (1907) which was a final savage. He died alone on May 14, 1912, in Stockholm.

Marin Hinkle & Reg Rogers 

by Craig Lucas

Sarah Sutherland & Daniel Frediksen at Red Stitch Theatre

Some of Miss Julie Productions:

Miss Julie (1999) Film
Froken Julie (1951) Sweden
Miss Julie (1972) Film
Miss Julie (1986) TV

Froken Julie (1912) Sweden

Miss Julie (1987) TV

Miss Julie (1991) TV

Miss Julie (2009)

Film: Miss Julie- Swedish-Directed by Alf Sjoberg. January 22, 2008
Film: After Miss Julie- American Airlines- Director Mark Brokaw. October 22
Film: Miss Julie- Two river Theater NJ- Directed Mercedes Murphy
Film: Miss Julie- Actors theatre of Louisville- December 11, 1966

Film: After Miss Julie- Sienna Miller. Director: Patrick Marber 2009-10.

Sienna Miller as Miss Julie

-The 1888 play Miss Julie has become of the world's most performed and respected stage works. The play Miss Julie was banned in Sweden for almost twenty years because of class conflict and sexual abandonment.

Stage: Miss Julie- Australian- Belvoir Theatre- June 5, 2008

Stage: Miss Julie-Aurora Theatre Company, Berkeley, CA. April 11, 2009

Opera: Miss Julie- Manhattan School of Music Opera Theatre. NY

Strindberg's Drama:

The Outlaw, 1871 

Master Olof, 1872
Lucky Peter's Travels, 1882 

The Father, 1887
Miss Julie, 1888 Comrades, 1888
Creditors, 1888 

Pariah, 1888
The Stronger, 1888-1889

Motherly Love, 1892 

The First Warning, 1892 

To Damascus, 1898-1902
Gustav Vasa, 1899
Erik XIV, 1899 

The Dance of Death, 1900 

Easter, 1900 

Engelbrekt, 1901
Carl XII, 1901
A Dream Play, 1901
Swan Blood, 1902
The Chamber Plays, 1907

The Storm
The Burned Site

The Pelican
The Ghost Sonata
Merry Christmas

The Great Highway, 1909

Strindberg's Poetry, Fiction, and Autobiography:

From Fjerdingen and Svartbacken, 1877
The Red Room, 1879

Swedish People at Work and Play, 1881-1882
The New Country, 1882

Swedish Destiny and Adventure, 1882-1891
Poetry in Verse and Prose, 1883
Sleepwalker Awakens to the Day, 1884
Married I-II, 1884-1886Utopian on Reality, 1885
Son of a Servant I-V
Natives of Hemso, 1887
The Defense's Speech of a Fool
Life of an Island Lad
Among French Peasants, 1889
By The Open Sea, 1890
Inferno, 1890

Video

The Republic Theatre Company, New York City

Sources:
http://www.answers.com/topic/august-strindberg
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/ronsreviews/covers/1452235.jpg
http://images.broadwayworld.com/upload/43269/1_Miss-Julie_th.jpg
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/05/20/arts/Julie184.jpg
http://blog.jaman.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/picture-33.png
http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2007/04/19/RED_STITCH_wideweb__470x279,0.jpg http://www.brockleyjack.co.uk/Miss%20Julie%2019%20copy.jpg https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht17TpPAuaG0dmHeLE7FnMDN8b1WK-mvQXPKuoD10T9kCAtij8yUzMAXIScTbbHZrVoAQFfoTBmYgPI1VaxDF_tUqJpiIbTDQIa7vCIMP7bG6LIQf-y3HMLxFJRuHhjArFh3crvsjNAWk/s320/Front.jpg http://www.methuenbookshop.co.uk/images/475/0413666107.jpg
http://www.brockport.edu/theatre/~Julie1.JPG
http://aura.gaia.com/photos/36/354078/large/Jean_in_Miss_Julie.jpg https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK0uzfifX4Pw_lAGn6FQ88PqJ0O-87dE2NPxG6nuHqCLVO2x59Q90Cd1TOoFcFAx7MtumT_CNb5sMYIzd29ucji9-IK1Nn9BY69-k20OO19YcI6gVTslzE_zS3vlJ0F288vnJApG5TOarz/s400/510itxKn2BL__SL500_AA240_.jpg