A schoolboy Harold Pinter plays Romeo in Joe Brearley’s 1947 production. It was staged at Dalston County Secondary School near Hackney Downs.

JOE AND HAROLD
By Tim Dowley

This Play Reading Workshop aims to bring actors, directors and writer’s together. This event will focus on one play with the playwright hosting the session. If you are a writer and have a play you would like to submit for Play Reading Workshop please send your submission via our Contact page.

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Tim Dowley’s new play Joe and Harold portrays with humour and passion the enduring creative relationship of Harold Pinter and Joseph Brearley – the English teacher who Pinter said ‘fired my imagination’. 

Based on research and experience, the drama portrays the men’s evolving friendship, the importance of Pinter’s ‘gang’, Brearley’s influence on Harold, and a maverick school teacher’s conflicted life.

We will read the play together and discuss its background, exploring the links with Pinter’s plays and insights into their themes and settings.

Dear Joe, I’d like to walk with you
From Clapton Pond to Stamford Hill
And on.
Through Manor House to Finsbury Park,
And back,
On the dead 653 trolleybus,
To Clapton Pond
And walk across the shadows on to Hackney Downs,
And stop by the old bandstand,
You tall in the moonlight,
And the quickness in which it all happened,
And the quick shadow in which it persists.

Harold Pinter

A “Pay what you can” event.

Friday, Dec 4th | 7 - 9:30pm {UK}. Live on Zoom.