Original version

BBC World Service Online

The Forum

Documentaries

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

The programme that explains the present by exploring the past

The programme that explains the present by exploring the past.

BBC World Service Australasia

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa Schedule

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa

BBC World Service schedule for American satellite radio and the Caribbean

BBC World Service Americas and the Caribbean

BBC World Service

BBC World Service South Asia

BBC World Service News Internet

BBC World Service Europe and the Middle East

BBC World Service West and Central Africa Schedule

BBC World Service West and Central Africa

BBC World Service East Asia

The Forum: Luigi Pirandello: Italian dramatist who brought chaos to the stage

A scene from a production of Pirandello's play, Six Characters in Search of an Author

02/09/2021 GMT

Luigi Pirandello: Italian dramatist who brought chaos to the stage

BBC World Service - The Forum, Luigi Pirandello: Italian dramatist who brought chaos to the stage

The radical, convention-breaking plays of an architect of modern 20th century theatre

The playwright and author from Sicily who caused shockwaves in the theatre and challenged conventions with his radical philosophical approach.

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 Pirandello: From Page to Stage; and Patricia Gaborik, who teaches theatre history at the University of Calabria in Italy, and has studied Pirandello’s relationship with the Italian Fascist leader Mussolini and is the author of Mussolini’s Theatre: Fascist Experiments in Art and Politics. 

The readings were by Marco Gambino.

Produced by Anne Khazam for the BBC World Service. 

(Image: A scene from a production of Pirandello's play, Six Characters in Search of an Author, staged by French theatre director Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota at the Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre. Credit: Artyom Geodakyan\TASS via Getty Images)

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Forum

Luigi Pirandello: Italian dramatist who brought chaos to the stage

Genres

Formats

Brand

BBC World Service Online

About BBC World Service