Pirandello's Debut as Director: the Opening of the Teatro d' Arte

Abstract

In this, the centenary year of Pirandello's birth, there has been a revival, hopefully more than just circumstantial, of interest in his work in the English-speaking theatre – which has previously tended to acknowledge his influence without often producing his plays. But Pirandello's own theatrical ambitions, which came quite late in his creative life, were initially as a director – indeed, the association with Mussolini which has sometimes cast a pall upon his reputation was largely in the interests of obtaining state patronage for his Teatro d' Arte company, which struggled unsuccessfully for survival between 1925 and 1928. Initially, however, hopes were high, and the inaugural productions both artistically and technically exciting. In the following feature. Susan Bassnett, a Pirandello specialist who teaches in the Graduate School of Comparative Literature in the University of Warwick and is a regular contributor to NTQ, describes the circumstances behind the opening of the company, while Alessandro Tinterri, of the Actors' Museum of Genoa, analyzes the curious encounter in the first major production. The Gods of the Mountain, between Pirandello as director and the now little-remembered Irish cricketer-dramatist. Lord Dunsany.