Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author": From Rome to Niagara-on-the-Lake

This year we celebrate the centenary of the first performance of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, presented at the Teatro Valle in Rome on May 9, 1921. This version was staged in 2000 and 2001 at the Shaw Festival with considerable audience and critical success. One should note, however, that almost all the other stagings of this play are based on a new version of the original text that Pirandello penned in 1923 and in 1925, making fundamental changes, additions and significant cuts to the original text.
The director of the Shaw production, Tadeusz Bradecki, and its translator, theatre scholar Domenico Pietropaolo, analyze and comment on the staging with Donato Santeramo who opens the discussion with an analysis of the changes made by Pirandello to the original text of 1921.
Presented by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura Toronto.
TADEUSZ BRADECKI
Tadeusz Bradecki is an internationally renowned, actor, playwright, academic and award-winning theatre director, receiving numerous awards for Best Director at various theatre festivals, both in Poland (Wroclaw, Opole, Szczecin, Torun festivals) and abroad (Sarajevo, Mess Festival, 1998) and the Swinarski Award, 1987.
His many directorial credits include Banquet (Miejski Theatre, Gdynia, Poland); Hamlet (Dramatyczny Theatre, Warsaw, Poland); Artaud at Rodez (Drama Center, London, UK); Measure for Measure (Hungarian National Theatre, Tirgu Mures, Romania); Tosca (Silesian Opera, Bytom, Poland); Hedda Gabler (Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre, USA); Endgame (Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre, USA); Romeo and Juliet (Polski Theatre, Wroclaw, Poland)
His directorial credits in Canada include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Theatre Calgary); for the National Theatre School: The Rover; The Liar; for the Shaw Festival: Guys and Dolls; Candida; The House of Bernarda Alba.
Bradecki was also awarded the Chevalier of the French Ordre des Lettres et Artes in 1993.
DOMENICO PIETROPAOLO
Domenico Pietropaolo is a professor of Italian literature and theatrical studies at the University of Toronto, where he was also director of the Graduate Centre for Study of Drama and the Department of Italian Studies as well as Dean of St. Michael's College. His main interests are the dramaturgy of stagging and the study of theatrical processes, medieval Italian literature, modern theatre and Futurism. His main publications include the volumes Semiotics of the Christian Imagination, Semiotics and Pragmatics of Stage Improvisation, Dante Studies in the Age of Vico, The Baroque Libretto (with M.A. Parker) and numerous essays on literary and theatrical history.
DONATO SANTERAMO
Donato Santeramo is a professor and Head of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, cross-appointed to the Dan School of Drama and Music at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada and a faculty member in the graduate school of The University of Rome II. He has published books and essays on theatre, literature, semiotics and cinema, including, most recently Semiotics: The Science of Signs, with Marcel Danesi, Il laboratorio pubblico di Edward Gordon Craig and Luigi Pirandello: La pagina, la scena e il mito. He coedited, with Manuela Gieri, Twentieth Century Italian Filmmakers and, with Craig Walker, Perspectives on Contemporary Theatre in Canada. Finally, he translated and staged several works by Italian playwrights including Eduardo De Filippo, Dario Fo, Franca Rame, Michele Perriera and Paolo Puppa.