Outspoken Nobel laureate topic of lecture

By Kristen Peterson (contact)

Sunday, Jan. 22, 2006 | 10:10 a.m.

What: Lecture on Harold Pinter, 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature.

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Where: UNLV's Barrick Museum Auditorium.

Admission: Free.

Information: 895-3401.

Forget for a moment that Harold Pinter's anti-U.S. policy speech, given when he accepted the Nobel Prize in Literature, received more media attention than his recognition as a playwright.

Forget that he's a controversial and outspoken humanitarian, drawing as much criticism as praise.

Christopher Hudgins, an international Pinter scholar and chairman of UNLV's English Department, wants you to know about the man as an artist.

Hudgins has been writing about Pinter's work for more than 20 years, and in 1986 was one of the founding editors of Pinter Review. More recently he spent four days in Stockholm, Sweden, as Pinter's invited guest for the Nobel festivities.

On Tuesday, when Hudgins discusses Pinter's work and career as part of the University Forum Lecture Series, he said he'll concentrate mostly on his artistic career and not the playwright's politics.

"A lot of people don't know much about Harold Pinter the artist," Hudgins said. "And not a whole lot of people know tremendous amounts about the theater in the last 30 years."

"Harold Pinter got the Nobel Prize because of his artistic abilities," Hudgins said.

A playwright, poet, director, actor and political activist, Pinter, 75, has written more than 30 plays and two dozen screenplays, including "The French Lieutenant's Woman." He has directed more than 30 stage, film and TV productions, and in 2005 received the Wilfred Owen prize for poetry for his verses against the war in Iraq.

His early work, however, focuses mostly on British working-class society.

"It manages to make the audience recognize and participate in Pinter's vision of the world as a hostile place," Hudgins said. "But also implicit is the idea that we can do better.

"It's an inspirational rubbing of the audience's nose in their world and calling for change."

Hudgins became fascinated with the playwright, then regarded as a new voice offering a new kind of realism, after seeing "The Birthday Party," in 1964 as an English undergraduate. At Emory University in Atlanta, he did his dissertation on Pinter's work.

His first published article on Pinter appeared in the early 1980s after he met with the playwright in London. Hudgins has been interviewing him intermittently for 22 years.

"We talked about TV plays and film scripts, his work in the theater. We talked a little about his politics. He's a complex person, but a tremendously generous man," Hudgins said.

As for whether it's possible to separate the man from the artist, Hudgins says yes, but adds, "He's certainly interested in power structures, whether they affect individual lives or a nation's life."

Because of his struggle with esophageal cancer, Pinter gave his Nobel Prize speech via video. It was projected on three giant screens to the audience of mostly Pinter scholars and of members of the Swedish Academy.

Some critics said Pinter's speech, which received a standing ovation, was probably his last public rant on U.S. policy.

But Hudgins disagrees.

"I don't think so. He's eating like a horse. Healthy as can be under the circumstances."

Kristen Peterson can be reached at 259-2317 or at kristen@lasvegassun.com.