Pirandello Project

Practical workshops, master classes, directing projects aimed at theater academies, acting and directing students, professional actors and directors, professional theater companies, scholars.
Experience Luigi Pirandello’s original style and the unique relationship with the forms and techniques of the Italian Commedia dell’ Arte: half masks, improvisation, storytelling, play into play.

Story of Pirandello Project

The project was presented for the first time in 2001 in the USA as a spectacular conference invited by the IIC Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco, director Amelia Carpenito Antenucci. It was part of the special events organized by the IIC and by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the American staging of the Luigi Pirandello play “Enrico IV” , produced by ACT American Conservatory Theater of San Francisco and directed by Carey Perloff. On that occasion ACT Conservatory invited me to teach a professional workshop on Commedia techniques and Pirandello.

Articulation

The project can be a combination of the following activities:

  • Workshop on the techniques of the Italian Commedia dell’ Arte in relation with the theater of Luigi Pirandello – aimed at Theater Conservatories and Theater Schools.
  • Staging of a student production directed by Valeria Campo – an adaptation from the following plays : Tonight We Improvize, Six characters in Search of an Author, The Man with the Flower in hs Mouth, other plays TBD.
  • Masterclasses for professional actors and directors.
  • Staging of a professional production directed by Valeria Campo – an adaptation from the following plays: Tonight We Improvize, Six characters in Search of an Author, Enrico IV, The Man with the Flower in hs Mouth, other plays TBD.

Pirandello and Italian Commedia dell’ Arte techniques: masks, improvisation, play within the play

“Everyone wears a mask, not a literal one, but a mask nonetheless: every one plays a role in the comedy of life”

Luigi Pirandello

Luigi Pirandello, winner of the 1934 Noble Prize for Literature, was a theater person all-round: playwright, producer, artistic director, stage director with ground-breaking intuitions on acting, an innovator of the scenic space and creator of modern light design. As a playwright he reacted against the naturalistic and melodramatic approach of the theater of his times and researched a theater capable of representing the fragmentation of the modern world. As a director he saw in the Italian Commedia dell’ Arte techniques – half masks, play within the play, improvisation, storytelling – the theatrical forms capable of giving concrete life on stage to the fragmenation of the modern man. The metaphorical idea of mask is at the root of his plays called collectively “Naked Masks”: the mask supplies Pirandello with a tangible, theatrical symbol of the conflict between illusion and reality.

The techniques of the Italian theatrical mask with regard to Pirandello’s theater and acting style. The mask reveals and hides at the same time; covering the face, the mask allows the actor to assume a double existence: the performer is at once himself and someone else in front of an audience. By wearing a mask, the actor ” meets the character”: he confronts himself with a character whose incredibly strong emotions are carved and fixed in the leather of the mask – happiness, pain, remorse, revenge.
At the same time through mask training the actor gains extraordinary strength, stage presence, personality: exactly what “Pirandello the director” demanded from his actors, in contrast to the theatrical tradition of his time.

Commedia dell’Arte and Mask training today

Training in the Commedia techniques is essential to act or direct a Pirandello play or study Pirandello as a researcher , especially for non Italian theatre practitioners.

General program

The workshop explores the techniques of the  Italian character mask and  the unique acting techniques of the   “half mask” of the Italian Comedy in relation to the theater of Luigi Pirandello.

  • Neutrality and universality of the full mask: exercises with the universal mask.
  • The body of the mask: stance, postures, walk; voice and language (elements of grammelot).
  • Masks and: status (master, servant); age (youth, maturity, old age); functions (mother, father, son); emotions.
  • Mask and counter-mask.
  • Techniques of relationship with the audience: “a parte ” and “riporto”.
  • The storytelling mask: technique and narrative exercises on dramatic material drawn from The Man with the Flower in his Mouth and Ciaula discovers the moon.
  • Improvisation techniques with / without mask.
  • The scenic space of Commedia dell’ Arte and the Pirandello scenic space.
  • Chorus work with and without mask on dramatic material drawn by Six Characters in Search of an Author.

Duration

To be agreed with the inviting institutions. Some choices:
5 days workshop
2 weeks workshop
4 weeks workshop
5 weeks workshop with public showing
8 weeks workshop with staging of adaptation of a Pirandello play directed by Valeria Campo
Intensive masterclass – 5 hours
5 week professional workshop with public showing