Luigi Pirandello in the Theatre

First Published in 1993. Contemporary Theatre Studies is a book series of special interest to everyone involved in theatre. This collection of documents is the first attempt in English to bring together a body of material on Luigi Pirandello as multi-faceted man of the theatre. Because relatively few of his works have been easily available to English language readers, he is thought of most frequently as a playwright, the author of Six Characters in Search of an Author and Henry IV in particular, and his contribution to theatre, both in theory and in practice, has tended to be overlooked. Emphasising his role as a director, the book traces the rise and fall of his own theatre company, the Teatro d’Arte where he struggled to instil new practices and comments on Pirandello’s attempts during the years of Fascism to give Italy a national theatre in a European context.

Introduction; SectionI Theoretical Beginnings and Early Practice 1899–1918; SectionII International Dramatist: Six Characters in Search of an Author and Henry IV; SectionIII The Teatro D’Arte 1923–1928; SectionIV The Later Years and After, 1929–1967; Conclusion;

Susan Bassnett is Professor at the Graduate School of Comparative Literary Theory and Literary Translation at the University of Warwick. Jennifer Lorch is a Lecturer at the University of Warwick.