To mark the 150th birth of Luigi Pirandello, the Italian Cultural Institute presents a double feature screening: “Uno Nessuno Pirandello”, a documentary recounting the Nobel prize laureate troubled life and exploring how his work influenced theater and drama during the 20th century, and “Sei Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore” (Six Characters in Search of an Author), in a famous production by Compagnia dei Giovani.
Total runtime: 110 minutes
Screenings in Italian with English subtitles
LOCATION
Embassy of Italy
3000 Whitehaven Street NW
Washington, DC 20008
DOCUMENTARY: UNO NESSUNO PIRANDELLO
On December 10, 1934 Luigi Pirandello received the Nobel Prize for Literature. 83 years have passed. Today Pirandello is still among the most performed authors in the world. With his texts he anticipated psychoanalysis, as Caesar Musatti wrote. The themes of his novels, theatrical works and novels are extreme contempory. The madness, the divided ego and the alienation of the machines are some of the themes of his significant body of work.
The documentary “One, none, Pirandello”, edited by Didi Gnocchi and Matteo Moneta, aired on Wednesday, December 10, 2013 on Sky Art. It includes testimonies from Marco Bellocchio, Luca Ronconi, Andrea Jonasson, Dario Fo, Michele Placido, Gabriele Lavia, Elio Providenti, Massimo Ammanniti, Emanuele Macaluso, Tony Servillo, Matteo Collura, Umberto Orsini, Adriana Asti and Mimmo Paladino.
PERFORMANCE: SEI PERSONAGGI IN CERCA D’AUTORE
Six Characters in Search of an Author is an Italian play by Luigi Pirandello, written and first performed in 1921, an absurdists meta-theatrical drama about the relationship among authors, their characters, and theatre practitioners. It premiered at the Teatro Valle in Rome to a mixed reception. Reception improved at subsequent performances, especially after Pirandello provided for the play’s third edition, published in 1925, a foreword clarifying its structure and ideas.
The play had its American premiere in 1922 on Broadway at the Princess Theatre and was performed for over a year off-Broadway at the Martinique Theatre beginning in 1963.
The six characters in search of an author, that aired on public television channel RaiTre, are an integral part of the history of the Italian Theater. It is one of the most famous titles in the Pirandello’s vast repertoire. Tonight’s play is one of the most well-known and most popular editions of the Compagnia dei Giovani, with Romolo Valli, Elsa Albani, Rossella Falk, Piero Sammataro, Ferruccio De Ceresa, Nora Ricci and Carlo Giuffrè, and directed by Giorgio De Lullo.