In March 2020, when the ramifications of COVID-19’s spread were becoming alarmingly clear to the world and San Franciscans were told to shelter in place, Carey Perloff was home with her husband in the Inner Richmond. The former artistic director of the city’s American Conservatory Theater, which she led for 26 years until her retirement in 2018, couldn’t help noting the parallels between the disquieting mood in her community and the air of stifling menace in the fictional worlds of one of her favorite playwrights, Harold Pinter.
“一种更高的沉默，一种初步的恐惧……遍布集体的心理。我开始思考Pinter，” Perloff在她的新书《 Pinter and Stoppard：A Direct》的简介中写道，她在锁定期间完成了。这既是对佩洛夫（Perloff）最严重影响的两位作家的个人考察，她与她紧密合作，也是其他戏剧艺术家的指南，以解锁两位剧作家综合体，戏剧性世界的奥秘。
Perloff had been introduced to the “queasy terror” of Pinter’s work as a Stanford undergraduate and had directed his plays numerous times, beginning with “The Birthday Party” at the Classic Stage Company in New York in 1989. She calls the Nobel Prize winner, who was famous (until his death in 2008) for his work’s ominous pauses, one of her artistic and aesthetic “lodestars.”
另一个是汤姆·斯托帕德（Tom Stoppard）。佩洛夫在他的脑脑，语言上的著作中找到了一种亲切的精神。
佩洛夫写道：“我想说的是哈罗德·普特（Harold Pinter）首先把我带到剧院，汤姆·斯托帕德（Tom Stoppard）留在那里。”
She directed 10 acclaimed Stoppard productions while at ACT, including his masterpiece “Arcadia” twice, collaborating with him personally on nearly all of them.
Perloff spoke to The Chronicle by phone ahead of a virtual event with local author Michael Chabon on Monday, May 9. She discussed making surprising connections between Stoppard and Pinter, two of the finest playwrights of their generation, including their Jewish backgrounds and shared wartime traumas as young boys. She also reflected on the concrete lessons she has gleaned from a career directing their work for American audiences and the ways, she says, their plays have “given structure to the architecture of my life.”
问：是什么吸引了您在大流行中的Pinter戏剧？
A：的确，锁定开始的那一天，这让我想到了Pinter，他的工作中的这种恐惧以及您如何真正知道危险在哪里，但它来自某个地方。这就是（共同）气氛对我来说的感觉，在外面有些恐惧，您必须避开或躲藏起来。所以我把Pinter从架子上拉了出来。我开始重读“归乡”和“生日聚会”，并想到了为什么这些戏剧对我来说意义重大。
问：他们俩都以巨大的自我为狂躁的男人而享有声誉，但是您经历了他们的热情，支持，协作性的大多数吗？
A：I did. My publisher thought I was being slightly Pollyannaish and so did (Stoppard’s biographer) Hermione Lee. And I said, “Look, all I can write about is my own personal experience.” Not to say in my years as a woman director I didn’t have really difficult experiences with men I did not name in the book, but boy, could I name them. But I never had that experience with either (Pinter or Stoppard).
When Pinter first walked in the door at CSC, I was a very young woman and untested, and he never patronized me. I think he realized that a happy rehearsal room was a rehearsal room in which the director was respected and that he was not going to upend that.
And I felt a total kinship with Stoppard from the moment I met him.
问：您描述的是，您每个人都有一种“认可”的感觉，您后来只了解这是关于犹太人的一部分。
A：That’s right. And it’s not only the Jewish connection. I realized (while working on “Arcadia”) that one of the things that Stoppard really cares about and mourns is lost culture, things that were beautiful or important and have disappeared, and how painful that is. He’s a man who fled Czechoslovakia, grew up in India during the war, ends up in England at age 8, passionately adopts English culture as his own, but later in life realizes that he’d lost his whole self-narrative. And he’s only begun to even try to find that in his 70s and 80s.
问：您还在联系吗？你保持联系吗？
A：Yes. I adore him. I saw him in London in November, and we spent the day together and I went to see “Leopoldstadt,” his Jewish play, which was very moving to me. He writes very, very, very funny, wonderful handwritten letters.
问：您撰写了这些剧作家的作品可以给经过心理训练的美国演员所面临的挑战。这是为什么？
A：If American actors have been trained in the Method, they’ve been trained to prepare a (character) biography. But Pinter wouldn’t find that useful. And with Stoppard, his language is so extraordinary and it’s not useful, as American actors are often taught, to create an arc of experience for a character, to plant seeds in the first scene that are going to pay off. Tom said that he thinks what’s thrilling about human beings and life is the reversals — you think you know what’s going to happen and it absolutely stands on its head.
问：写书时，您是否意识到Pinter和Stoppard的共同点比您意识到的更多，或者您对突出他们的差异更感兴趣？
A：一开始，我想：“我将如何证明这两位人们认为这两个作家是极地对立的作家？”
Pinter是极简主义者，Stoppard是最大程度的人。有了Pinter，一切都在一个房间里。有了Stoppard，它遍布世界。Pinter的比赛短而紧绷。停止蛋糕很长。但是我认为通过自己的经验将它们联系起来必须值得。然后，我意识到了犹太人联系的（意义）以及他们传记的迷人方面。他们俩都是从未去过过去17岁的学业的全部自动动物。当他们都是完全令人难以置信的知识分子时，这真是令人难以置信。他们读了一切。汤姆随身带图书馆。 Pinter could recite Kafka and Beckett by heart. I thought the richness of their plays comes from their shared appetite for self-learning
也是童年创伤的经历。我们永远无法真正理解Pinter通过闪电战生活并完全被送往他的家人以及他面对的反犹太主义的感觉。让斯托帕德（Stoppard）在2岁时离开家，最终进入印度的一个外国，两年来不知道他失去了父亲。
问:你做10斯托帕德作品的行为。什么圣ruck you about how much San Francisco audiences connect with his plays?
A：我真的必须归功于（ACT创始人）比尔·鲍尔（Bill Ball）和埃德·黑斯廷斯（Ed Hastings）在我来之前将斯蒂斯帕德（Stoppard）带来行动。那让我激动。我做的第一个是“ Arcadia”（1995年），这是一个好方法。这是他最好的戏剧之一。我还没有做过很长时间，我们已经离开了齿轮，破产，试图筹集3500万美元以在（Loma Prieta）地震发生后重建建筑物。这是一个非常困难的时期。观看观众真是太神奇了。他们参加了那场比赛，坠入爱河。
Pinter and Stoppard: A Director’s View
By Carey Perloff
(Methuen Drama; 240 pages; $25.95)
City Lights presents Carey Perloff in conversation with Michael Chabon:虚拟事件。下午6点5月9日，星期一。需要注册。citylights.com