The Forum

Luigi Pirandello: Italian dramatist who brought chaos to the stage

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Sinopsis

It’s a hundred years since the infamous premiere of Luigi Pirandello’s experimental play Six Characters in Search of an Author, when an enraged Rome theatre audience yelled abuse at the Italian playwright and chased him out of the theatre. Since then, the play has gained iconic status as a piece of theatre which helped move Western culture into modernity. But what of the author of this play? He was a complex figure who found inspiration from his wife’s madness as well as the actors he worked with, and he formed an unlikely association with the Italian Fascist Prime Minister Benito Mussolini which still intrigues theatre critics and academics to this day. Joining Rajan Datar to discuss Luigi Pirandello and his work are Guido Bonsaver, Professor in Italian Cultural history at the University of Oxford; Dr Enza de Francisci, lecturer in Translation studies at the University of Glasgow, who specialises in Pirandello’s Sicilian identity and his portrayal of women, and is the author of A 'New' Woman in Verga and P