Directing Pinter

The Black And White is an innocent enough looking piece. Just three and a half pages long, it is a peek into the lives of two old women sat in an all night cafe. Typically Pinter, it is wonderfully ambiguous. He provides no clues as to where the women have come from nor where they are going, so how do you play the scene? You most definitely do not force an interpretation on the piece. As a director of Pinter one of your core responsibilities is to maintain the ambiguity for the audience to relish. To do otherwise is to serve up a doughnut having sucked out the jam! But equally, to just say the lines and slurp the soup makes for a bland offering. The challenge was to walk the tightrope between; to trust the words and to find the emotional symphony beneath – the humour and the pathos… it may be short, but what a rich symphony it is when you listen properly!
Initially I gave the actors just two directions. Firstly, one woman was a gannet and the other a sparrow. Enough to establish, critically, two distinct characters from the outset. Secondly, that they frequently annoyed each other, but if one of them ever died, the other would be lost. This gave motivation both for those moments of edginess and for those hints of friendship that are scattered through the script. With that it was straight onto the rehearsal floor as this is definitely a piece to be felt rather than analysed.
Then we just had fun! We played with it, felt it, moulded it, overplayed it, pulled it back. It is a compact script. Virtually every line, every pause and every action had to be explored for its motivation, its timing, its magnitude … and then fine tuned again and again until the whole was smooth. If we’ve got it right, the audience will leave thinking how simple a piece it is!

David Martin