Listening to a Pinter double bill: Mitchell’s direction of Mountain Language and Ashes to Ashes at the Royal Court Theatre
Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: The double bill of Harold Pinter’s Mountain Language and Ashes to Ashes at the Royal Court Theatre in June-July 2001 has proven to be a kind of its own in the history of productions of Pinter’s plays for the stage. What I attempt to do in this essay is to recapture the double bill by analysing a monophonic and unedited sound-only recording of the performance of Mountain Language on 2 July 2001 and that of the performance of Ashes to Ashes on the same date, both archived in the British Library. I will show 1) how sounds in the performances of the two plays related to one another; and 2) how significant Katie Mitchell’s direction of both plays and Gareth Fry’s sound design for the double bill were at the crossroads of Pinter, performance, and sound.
Source: Sound Studies
Author: Naoko Yagi
Institutions: Waseda University, University of Cambridge
Language: English
Subfield: Visual Arts and Performing Arts
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4321365747