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Luigi Pirandello (28 June 1867 – 10 December 1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, poet, and short story writer whose greatest contributions were his plays.

Pirandello’s works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written in Sicilian. Pirandello’s tragic farces are often seen as forerunners of the Theatre of the Absurd.

He was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature for “his almost magical power to turn psychological analysis into good theatre.”

In 1894, following his father’s suggestion he married a shy, withdrawn girl educated by the nuns of San Vincenzo: Antonietta Portulano.

In 1903, the flooding of the sulphur mines of Aragona, in which Pirandello’s father Stefano had invested not only an enormous amount of his own capital but also Antonietta’s dowry, precipitated the collapse of the family. Antonietta, after opening and reading the letter announcing the catastrophe, entered into a state of semi-catatonia and underwent such a psychological shock that her mental balance remained profoundly and irremediably shaken.

In 1919 Pirandello had his wife placed in an asylum. Separation from her, despite her morbid jealousies and hallucinations, caused him great suffering; even as late as 1924, he believed he could still properly care for her at home. She never left the asylum.

Among Pirandello’s most famous plays: Right You Are (If You Think You Are) (1917); Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921); Henry IV (1922); Each in His Own Way (1924).

Our current production,The Man With the Flower in His Mouth (1922) is partly noteworthy for becoming, in 1930, the first piece of television drama ever to be produced in Britain, when a version was screened by the British Broadcasting Corporation.

In 1925, Pirandello, with the help of Mussolini, assumed the artistic direction and ownership of the Teatro d’Arte di Roma. He described himself as “a Fascist because I am Italian.” For his devotion to Mussolini, the satirical magazine Il Becco Giallo used to call him P. Randello (randello in Italian means club).

In 1927 he tore his fascist membership card to pieces in front of the startled secretary-general of the Fascist Party. For the remainder of his life, Pirandello was always under close surveillance by the secret fascist police.

Pirandello died alone in his home at Via Bosio, Rome.

The Man With the Flower in His Mouth, by Luigi Pirandello (Playing time: 20:30)
Starring William Smithers and Pope Freeman

(A casual conversation between strangers turns dark.)

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Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904 was a Russian playwright and short-story writer, who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his literary career: “Medicine is my lawful wife”, he once said, “and literature is my mistress.”

Chekhov had at first written stories only for financial gain, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.

One of the first non-Russians to praise Chekhov’s plays was George Bernard Shaw, who pointed out similarities between the predicament of the British landed class and that of their Russian counterparts as depicted by Chekhov: “the same nice people, the same utter futility.”

Chekhov’s best plays and short stories lack complex plots and neat solutions. Concentrating on apparent trivialities, they create a special kind of atmosphere, sometimes termed haunting or lyrical. Chekhov described the Russian life of his time using a deceptively simple technique devoid of obtrusive literary devices, and he is regarded as the outstanding representative of the late 19th-century Russian realist school.

Though already celebrated by the Russian literary public at the time of his death, Chekhov did not become internationally famous until the years after World War I, by which time the translations of Constance Garnett (into English) and of others had helped to publicize his work.

In the United States, Chekhov’s reputation began its rise slightly later, partly through the influence of Constantin Stanislavski whose Moscow Art Theater had produced four of Chekhov’s plays. Stanislavski’s system of acting, with its notion of subtext: “Chekhov often expressed his thought not in speeches,” wrote Stanislavski, “but in pauses or between the lines or in replies consisting of a single word … the characters often feel and think things not expressed in the lines they speak.”

In this country, The Group Theatre, in particular, developed Stanislavki’s subtextual approach to drama, influencing generations of American playwrights, screenwriters, and actors, including Clifford Odets, Elia Kazan and, in particular, Lee Strasberg. In turn, Strasberg’s Actors Studio and the “Method” acting approach influenced many actors.

The Boor, by Anton Chekhov (Playing time: 27:40)
Starring Leslie Gangl-Howe, Michael Manson and Larry Williams

(Should a grieving widow pay her husband’s debts or fall in love?)

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