A starry lineup of actors including Martin Freeman, Jane Horrocks, Tamsin Greig, David Suchet and Danny Dyer are to appear in a mammoth and unprecedented theatrical venture to bring all Harold Pinter’s one-act plays to the West End.

The ambitious season will mark the 10th anniversary of Pinter’s death by staging 20 plays over 24 weeks in the London theatre that has borne his name since 2011.

The man behind the season is stage director Jamie Lloyd, who said he hoped theatregoers would feel it was a bit like collecting vinyl. “You can rediscover some great mini-masterpieces, experience those rarities you’ve been waiting ages to find, as well as stumble upon some surprising discoveries that lead you somewhere new.”

Pinter, awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 2005, is regarded as one of the finest, most influential and most provocative dramatists of his generation. The word Pinteresque – long pauses, hidden menace – even appears in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Lloyd said Pinter revolutionised international theatre. “He captured the comedically inane inconsistencies of everyday conversation, but, crucially, he understood that behind so much of our interaction with each other is a jostling for power – the battle for survival – or a concealment of emotion.

“There is always something else lurking just below the surface.”

Pinter’s plays, said Lloyd, are “as surreal, funny, dangerous, beautiful and as puzzling as life … and the political force of his words feels more vital and necessary than ever”.

The Pinter at the Pinter season is supported by the writer’s widow, Lady Antonia Fraser, who called it a “great adventure”. She said: “It’s never been done before and I am deeply excited at the prospect of seeing them all together in one season.

“I do have a wistful thought: if only Harold could be here to experience it himself. As it is, this is the most appropriate and thrilling way to mark the 10th anniversary of his death.”

Many of the company that is being gathered were Pinter’s friends and collaborators. Danny Dyer, for example, was mentored by Pinter when he was a young actor and spoke fondly, in his own Danny Dyer way, about Pinter in a Guardian interview.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Danny Dyer: ‘Pinter was a fucking tyrant but he got away with it because he was so enchanting.’ Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian

“He was the only person who I feared but loved,” Dyer said. “He had faith in me, he suffered all my shit because he knew I was a talented actor. He was a fucking tyrant too, you know, but he could get away with it because he was so enchanting. He was a poet.”

Dyer appeared in the premiere of Celebration at the Almeida theatre in Islington in 2000 and its transfer to the Lincoln Center in New York. He was later in the 2001 National Theatre production of No Man’s Land and the Almeida’s 2008 production of The Homecoming.

For the Pinter season Dyer, who plays EastEnders landlord Mick Carter – this week attacked by a mystery masked strangler – will appear with Martin Freeman in the dark 1957 comedy The Dumb Waiter about two hitmen holed up in a grotty basement waiting for their next job.

Directors for the season include Lloyd, Lyndsey Turner and Patrick Marber, who directed the 40th anniversary production of The Caretaker. For the one-act play season Marber will direct Pinter’s rarely staged first play, The Room, starring Horrocks, and Family Voices and Victoria Station.

Other highlights include Tamsin Greig in A Kind of Alaska, inspired by Oliver Sacks’s book Awakenings, about a woman who wakes up from a 29-year sleep and is suspended between the conscious and unconscious worlds. It was first performed in 1982 at the National Theatre with Judi Dench in the role.

Lloyd has become known for staging commercial productions that actively and successfully seek out new, younger, more diverse audiences with plays such as Macbeth with James McAvoy and Genet’s The Maids with Zawe Ashton, Laura Carmichael and Uzo Aduba.

For the new season he will direct 10 of the plays, including Celebration and Party Time, with a cast that will include Ron Cook, Celia Imrie, Abraham Popoola and Tracy-Ann Oberman.

Tickets go on sale on Thursday and producers are offering 25,000 across the season at £15 for people under 30, key workers and those receiving jobseeker’s allowance. At the other end of the scale, a best seats season ticket will cost £420.

The season will be one of a number of cultural events marking the 10th anniversary of Pinter’s death, which include a season of his films and television work at the BFI Southbank in June and July.

• Pinter at the Pinter, at the Harold Pinter theatre, runs from 6 September to 23 February