This isn't an elegy for Pinter, but I picked up my first script of his, The Birthday Party, and though I find it interesting, I find it a little weird. I'm planning on doing a monologue from it for a workshop I'm doing next weekend. Any tips on how to approach Pinter? I know it's no Shakespeare, but I'm trying to cipher through everything.

Thanks!

I am responding just because I am right there with you. I've never worked extensively on Pinter. But I would start by reading his obituaries in a couple newspapers (definitely British and leftist as well as the NY Times) and then read some criticism of his plays from a literary p.o.v., like Harold Bloom, if he wrote one. What forces was he wrestling? Who were his friends? Then just work on the monologue in the reality that you find there. Go with the weirdness if it still seems weird. What aspect of the play are you referring to with the word weird? I found it helpful to mark Joe Orton's lineage from Oscar Wilde when I was in "Loot".