SOURCE: Pinter, Harold, and Anne-Marie Cusac. “Harold Pinter.” Progressive 65, no. 3 (March 2001): 32-8.

In the following interview, Pinter discusses his political orientation and his treatment of the themes of power and powerlessness in his plays.

Several months back, a colleague handed me a copy of the British journal The New Internationalist. The issue would interest me, she said, because it included a special section on U.S. prisons and because Harold Pinter had written an essay for it. (She knew I had long admired Pinter's plays.) I read the Pinter essay, finding to my surprise that it mentioned the stun belt and the restraint chair, two subjects I had reported on for The Progressive.

I wrote Pinter, requesting a couple of hours for an interview. He promptly agreed.

I first checked out a copy of The Caretaker from the library years ago, on the advice of a writing teacher...