In their published interviews, Pinter and Woolf vary in describing how many days Pinter took to write "The Room". According to Billington, in his official biography "Harold Pinter", Woolf asked Pinter to write the play in a letter that Pinter received in the autumn of 1956, when he "was newly married" to actress Vivien Merchant "and in the middle of a season at Torquay"; " replied that he couldn't possibly deliver anything in under six months. In fact, the play arrived in the post very shortly. It was written over four afternoons and late nights while Pinter was playing in Rattigan's "Separate Tables" at the Pavilion Theatre, Torquay, in November 1956. "The Room", as the play was called, was eventually staged by the Bristol Drama Department in May 1957 in a converted squash-court and in a production by Woolf himself" (66–67).