Chapter 14 - Georges Pitoëff

Summary

Georges Pitoëff, who was born in Georgia but moved to France in the 1920s and formed the Pitoëff Company with his wife Ludmilla, was one of the most important directors for Pirandello’s success in France. Pitoëff considered directing an autonomous art, in which the director is an “absolute autocrat.” His first meeting with Pirandello occurred during the staging of Six Characters in 1923 at the Champs-Elysées Theatre in Paris, in which the director famously lowered the six characters onto the stage with a freight elevator. The author, at first wary of the director’s innovations, would then establish a dialogue and friendship with him that lasted until the end of his life. The relationship was characterized by frequent misunderstandings and arguments, especially about the role of directing, and reached its culmination in 1935 with the staging of Tonight We Improvise in Paris during the celebrations for the Nobel Prize awarded to Pirandello. Pitoëff’s best-remembered Pirandello production remains his 1925 Henri IV.