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Actes du XIVe Congrès International des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du SpectacleBeograd 15-20 septembre 1980. Beograd : 1982. ISSN 0361-7500
Alessandro TinterriThe Compagnia del Teatro d'Arte Directed by Luigi Pirandello 1925-1928pp. 150-155
At the Civico Museo Biblioteca dell'Attore del Teatro di Genova, a research is under way having as object the history of the compagnia del Teatro d'Arte in Rome, which Luigi Pirandello established in 1925 and directed until August 1928. This research started from materials, mostly unpublished, are comprised in the archives of three kept at the Museo dell'Attore and are in many ways complementary to each other:
The materials collected, copious and diverse, include: the plan of the theatre where the Company first opened on 2 April 1925 and continued until 3 June of the same year; the drawings of the scenography, photos of the performances, a few scripts; some reIics such as, for example, the costume Picasso wore as the Father in Six Characters in Search of an Author; there are also letters and papers We have read and studied magazines and newspapers of those years and we were able to rebuild the Company's daily repertory and its tours abroad. These very important proofs permit us to evaluate and understand the intentions and reasons which guided Pirandello through his experience as director. We also looked for the old play programs to follow the changes which occurred in the artistic listing. During our research we have found evidence confirming the significance we had attributed to Pirandello's directing experience. We also found confirmations that such an experience influenced his playwriting activity. An example of some of our findings can be found in the last edition of Six Characters in Search of an Author printed by Bemporad in 1925. In this edition, which is the one we all know, the Six Characters come from the back of the theatre accompanied by the Commissionaire, and they reach the stage by two small flights of steps. This expedient brings the actors into contact with the public as the author points out in the initial caption. But it was not like this in the first edition of 1921. As a matter of fact, if we read the first edition of the Six Characters in Search of an Author, we notice that not only did the Characters come from a small door at the back of the stage, but that there was no trace of any communication between the actors and the public. Dario Niccodemi followed this version during the first staging of the play in Rome at the Valle Theatre on 10 May 1921. Two years later, on 10 April 1923, George Pitoëf staged the Six Characters in Search of an Author in Paris at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées. Under his direction the Six Characters were brought on stage by means of a service lift. By this same lift they disappeared at the end and went back to their original place, conferring to Pirandello's "play in the making" a new circularity. Pirandello, at first, is against this change but when he sees the performance in Paris, he is convinced of its effectiveness. However, this innovation is limited to Paris: here all the action takes place only on stage. Max Reinhardt's direction of the play in Berlin on 30 December 1924 brought nothing new in this sense: the Six Characters again come from the small door backstage. Now our question was: where did Pirandello get the ideas for all of the captions appearing in the last edition? None of the hints were described in the edition presented in 1921. What happened in the meantime? In Rome, towards the end of 1924, the Societa del Teatro d'Arte was established and Pirandello became its director. The playwright finally had a Company and a permanent theatre which allowed him to bring to life his plan for reforming the Italian theatre. He dedicated himself completely to this new achievement and participated in first person to the planning of the new theatre. It is in this project that we find for the first time the small flights of steps mentioned in the captions of Six Characters in Search of an Author. Virgilio Marchi, the architect, mentions in his notes, how Pirandello intervened when the stage was built. It had to be lowered, in comparison to the standard stage, until it was only 90 centimetres from the floor of the theatre itself. He also wanted to add to the prospect, the possibility of a communication between the stage and the public. For this purpose the architect added two small movable flights of steps to the stage. These steps made it possible each time to have either a closed front stage with a central flight of steps (the steps next to each other); or side tiers (a set of steps on each side of the stage), or again a mystic gulf which included the two small flights of steps to form the harmonious curve for the orchestra beneath the stage there the steps were not only next to each other but faced each other). The Theatre was inaugurated on 2 April 1925, with Luigi Pirandello's single act play Sagra del Signore della Nave. This was followed by The Gods of the Mountain, a play by the Irish playwright Lord Dunsany. The play Sagra del Singore della Nave had first appeared in the magazine Il Convegno in the edition of Sept. 1924. For the first time, Pirandello, in this single act play, foresees a communication between the stage and the public by means of a small bridge. The text, which in fact ends with a procession climbing to the stage, was to have been performed at the Theatre del Convegno in Milan, directed by Enzo Ferrieri, in December of 1924, but at the last minute it was cancelled. One of the obstacles which prevented the performance was a police rule prohibiting any kind of contact between the public and the actors. The following year, at opening night at Odescalchi Theatre, under the direction of Pirandello, the procession arrived from the foyer, crossed the theatre where the public was sitting, and reached the stage by the two small flights of steps on each side of the stage. This is clearly seen in a photograph of the performance. It is obvious that this time the director's prestige, and the fact that this new theatre was well protected, helped to overcome the police rule. This trespassing of the theatrical action within the public was mainly due to scenography demands. The playwright-director Pirandello was full of new ideas when he directed Six Characters in Search of an Author at Odescalchi Theatre on 18 May 1925. I believe that we can affirm that this kind of direction had not been premeditated in advance. There are two reasons demonstrating this statement:
In fact the final edition of Six Characters in Search of an Author represents the playwriting transcription of the performance directed by the author at Odescalchi Theatre. The two small flights of steps which the author introduces in the initial caption give origin to the appearance of the Six Characters from the back of the Theatre and to the coming and going of the Producer from stage to public. This gives a visual translation of his increasing curiosity. The steps underline the actual and simultaneous presence of two worlds confirming the stage as a magic place catalyst of mysterious presences. Think of the irresitible appeal that the stage has on the Characters and of Madame Pace's evocation. Think again of the Son's inner struggle who can't go down those steps separating him from the public which would free him of his torments. He wanders along the length of the footlights without being able to cross that boundary and he remains prisoner of the part which he would like to refuse. Let us also remember the stimulating ending which does not exist in the first edition of 1921. This ending only describes again what happened during the famous performance at Odescalchi Theatre where the disappearance of the Characters behind a backcloth and the flight of the Stepdaughter through the public gave to Pirandello's "play in the making" a circularity which was felt in Pitoëff's direction but was all together absent in the first edition. It was not at all casual that Berlin's critics, who had seen the previous year Six Characters in Search of an Author directed by Max Reinhardt, were very interested in the performance by the Compagnia del Teatro d'Arte. The Compagnia toured Germany in October of 1925. The directing experience had therefore supplied precious suggestions to the playwright, which were not lost with the staging of the play but are here for us in the final pages of Pirandello's "play in the making". S L I D E S
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