Posted by Jock on March 11, 2008 at 15:21:36 from 87.105.81.146 user Jock.
I stumbled across this Nobel Lecture by Harold Pinter and immediately thought of our discussions on TarBoard. Did Pull Wood House, provide the inspiration for Beckfoot, or Lanehead, or perhaps Tent Lodge? Were the Amazons based on the Crossley girls, the Marshall sisters or the mother of the five Altounyan children and their aunt? Or...
Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.The rest of Pinter's lecture is worth reading as well. There are comments there about the state of the world and its leaders that are similar to those expressed a generation or two earlier by AR.I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did.
Given the complexities and perplexities of our world, it's small wonder our diversions into comparatively down to earth subjects such as plumbing and railways prove to be so popular.