Founded by Stefano Vaccara

Subscribe for only $6/Year
  • Login

Editor in Chief: Giampaolo Pioli

VNY La Voce di New York

The First Italian English Digital Daily in the US

English Editor: Grace Russo Bullaro

  • English Edition
  • Letters
  • New York
  • U.N.
  • News
  • People
  • Entertainment
  • Arts
  • Lifestyles
  • Food & Wine
  • Travel
  • Sports
  • Italian Edition
No Result
View All Result
VNY
  • English Edition
  • Letters
  • New York
  • U.N.
  • News
  • People
  • Entertainment
  • Arts
  • Lifestyles
  • Food & Wine
  • Travel
  • Sports
  • Italian Edition
No Result
View All Result
VNY La Voce di New York
No Result
View All Result
in
Arts
January 11, 2017
in
Arts
January 11, 2017
0

Pirandello 150: A Birthday Celebration at Film Forum

Festival kick off on January 13 at Film Forum with “Kaos” by Taviani Brothers

Sara FrunerbySara Fruner
pirandello-150-film-forum
Time: 6 mins read

Pirandello 150 Festival salutes the year, 1867, in which one of the giants of modern literature came to the world — 150 years ago in Agrigento, formerly known as Girgenti. John Martello, Artistic Director of the initiative, cares however to underline that the purpose of the Festival is not simply to celebrate an anniversary, but “to bring new audiences to his work and to re-establish his place in dramatic production.”

2017’s city-wide celebration, Pirandello 150 will officially kick off on January 13 at Film Forum with Kaos and will run through Thursday, January 19 — the selection including Liolà, The Late Mathias Pascal (Il fu Mattia Pascal), You Laugh (Tu ridi) and The Nanny (La tata). Yet it is just a taste of what the celebrations will propose throughout the year: one-act plays, major theatrical productions, readings, panel discussions, podcasts, and academic seminars are in the agenda, to offer the audience a 360-degree view on the author’s work.

premio-pirandelloNobel laureate for literature Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) is one of the seminal dramatists of the 20th century and his influence has been acknowledged by such masters as Sartre, Camus, Beckett, Ionesco, Edward Albee, Arthur Miller, and Thornton Wilder, along with the more contemporary playwrights inspired by those writers. Themes of illusion and identity, truth and mystification, are central to his production and have never stopped intriguing and challenging actors tackling his plays. In his works, Pirandello also evoked sights, sounds, smells, tastes and history of his native Sicily — land of contrasts, of sheer beauty and unspeakable pains.

“Our plan is to have at least one event of significance a mouth”, confirms Mr Martello, “in February we would like to feature a reading of the Mountain Giants (I giganti della montagna), Pirandello’s last unfinished play which is very rarely done in this country. As Executive Director of the Living Theater, I can say we have had a very successful reading of that work back in 1961. This year happens to be also the 70th anniversary of the Living Theatre — a good chance to connect the two events. For the spring, May-June, we are planning to have two major plays such as Tonight We Improvise (Stasera si recita a soggetto) and Each in Its Own Way (Ciascuno a suo modo) performed in rap at the Medicine Show Theater — Tonight We Improvise was actually a landmark production in 1975 at the Living Theater. What we also would like to do for this first half of the year, is the staging of a good portion of his one-act plays — Pirandello wrote forty one-acts — so the idea is to do 6-7 between now and the end of June, and other 6-7 in the fall. We are also working on different lectures and panel discussions whose organization we are finalizing these very days.”

pirandello-150The Director then refers one of the grounding motivation behind the festival, which can count on the newly-established Helluva Theater Company in the team. “We wanted to celebrate Pirandello, but we also wanted to give actors the chance to do what they would not have the chance to do. Pirandello is not played in this country, and he still yet unknown. Even people in the theater can just mention Six Characters in Search of an Author (Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore), maybe The Man with the Flower in His Mouth (L’uomo dal fiore in bocca), Right You Are (If You Think So) (Cosi è (se vi pare)) or Henry IV (Enrico IV), and that’s it. They do not know about the one-acts, or the other texts, and there is so much there! We just did a reading last week on Cap and Bells (Il berretto a sonagli), and it went over very well: people could not simply believe how funny it was. The reason why, I think, Pirandello is not staged in America is to be found in translation,” goes on Mr Martello, “The British have their own translations, but the Americans have translations which do not work well on stage: they are very stiff, unactable. And this is what we are also doing. We are re-translating his work. For instance, I translated Così è (se vi pare), then we performed it — with a wonderful cast — and went very very well: people loved it! And hopefully we will do a production of that too.”

pirandello-150-film-forum

Regarding specifically Così è (se vi pare), Martello also noted that, should he be asked to pick just one play by the playwright and stage it in a theater packed with millennials, he would go for that very play, as it encapsulates Pirandello’s major topics — truth and its relativism, unknowability of reality, the human need for masks. And yet the play results to be compelling, totally entertaining.

“What I keep saying is that a translation”, adds the Director on this thorny issue, “has to be actable and compelling, as any good work of literature should, but a script in particular. Another thing that is always left out of Pirandello, is the humor. People are afraid of seeing Pirandello because they think it is going to be heavy, dry, honorous. But he is very entertaining! And this is clear for example in Kaos.”

pirandello 150Adapted loosely from four stories by Pirandello’s Short Stories for a Year (Novelle per un anno), Kaos is an hymn to Sicily and its Pirandellean characters, stupendously directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani in 1984. These fables, preceded by an initial sequence that holds them together, and followed by an epilogue about the author himself in conversation with his mother, are united by a shared imagery and the recurrence of certain characters. Kaos perfectly grasps the Sicilianness of Pirandello’s work and includes any aspect investigated by his literature — the horrific, the comic, the supernatural, the sad, the painful. “Even the most horrific parts of the movies are still entertaining”, comments the Director. “Sophocles, Shakespeare, Shaw and Pirandello are still done today: you can say anything about their works, but they were first and foremost entertainers. Otherwise people would not respond to them: they would have been forgotten. And Pirandello is exactly that: he is entertaining, exciting — he is fun! And hopefully the productions we do are fun too.”

Mr Martello credits Bruce Goldstein, Film Forum Director of Repertory Programming, for the selection of the movies included in the program screened at the Film Forum. “It is his business and he is wonderful at doing it. Of course he consulted with me, which I was happy to do, and came out with this series. The first thing we cared about was quality: they had to be very good movies. There were other movies we would have liked to add, but could not get — As you Desire Me (Come tu mi vuoi) with Greta Garbo, or Man, Beast and Virtue (L’uomo, la bestia e la virtù) by Steno featuring Orson Welles and Totò. But in the end we have been very happy with the choice, which also boasts Six Characters in Search of an Author. It is a TV production, starring Andy Griffith as lead actor. The day it will be screened — Sunday 15 at 1:20 pm — we are also going to have a live skype-call with California, with director Stacy Keach and 102-year-old producer Norman Loyd — a pillar who has worked basically with anyone among the big ones, from Chaplin to Hitchcock, to Jean Renoir. And the screening is free admission, so we hope to have a very good crowd.”

And we hope a very good crowd will attend the entire Festival too, as Pirandello is never known enough, and his “minor” works never staged enough — also in Italy…

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
Sara Fruner

Sara Fruner

DELLO STESSO AUTORE

The New Translation of I Promessi Sposi: An Interview with Michael F. Moore

bySara Fruner
Amadeo Peter Giannini, il papà della Bank of America, “Il banchiere di tutti”

Amadeo Peter Giannini, Founding Father of the Bank of America, “The People’s Banker”

bySara Fruner

A PROPOSITO DI...

Tags: cinemaFilm ForumItalian cinemaitalian literatureLuigi Pirandellotheatertranslation
Previous Post

The Soulful Side of Bordeaux Wines

Next Post

La “papera incatenata” che azzanna potenti e prepotenti

DELLO STESSO AUTORE

Amadeo Peter Giannini, il papà della Bank of America, “Il banchiere di tutti”

Amadeo Peter Giannini, il papà della Bank of America, “Il banchiere di tutti”

bySara Fruner
Dalla sella alla sala: i “Wonderful Losers” del ciclismo guadagnano il grande schermo

Dalla sella alla sala: i “Wonderful Losers” del ciclismo guadagnano il grande schermo

bySara Fruner

Latest News

Tajani: non c’è bacchetta magica per M.O., noi “determinati” per pace

Tajani: non c’è bacchetta magica per M.O., noi “determinati” per pace

byAskanews-LaVocediNewYork
View of the sub-Saharan Africa gallery in the newly reinstalled Michael C. Rockefeller Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Featuring over 500 works from the 12th century to the present. © The Met, 2025.

Michael C. Rockefeller Wing Reopens at the Met with 40,000 Sq. Feet Reimagined

byMonica Straniero

New York

Crypto Kidnapping of Italian Citizen in SoHo: Swiss Trader Surrenders

Crypto Kidnapping of Italian Citizen in SoHo: Swiss Trader Surrenders

byMaria Nelli
Crypto shock a SoHo: si chiude il cerchio sul sequestro del “turista” italiano

Crypto shock a SoHo: si chiude il cerchio sul sequestro del “turista” italiano

byMaria Nelli

Italiany

Italy on Madison, la facciata della sede dell’Italian Trade Agency trasformata per tre giorni in una casa italiana.

Erica Di Giovancarlo (ITA): “Italian lifestyle è un modo di vivere”

byMonica Straniero
Il Prosecco italiano conquista i cuori delle donne USA

Il Prosecco italiano conquista i cuori delle donne USA

byAndrea Zaghi
Next Post
le canard echaine

La “papera incatenata” che azzanna potenti e prepotenti

La Voce di New York

Editor in Chief:  Giampaolo Pioli   |   English Editor: Grace Russo Bullaro   |   Founded by Stefano Vaccara

Editor in Chief:  Giampaolo Pioli
—
English Editor: Grace Russo Bullaro
—
Founded by Stefano Vaccara

  • New York
    • Eventi a New York
  • Onu
  • News
    • Primo Piano
    • Politica
    • Voto Estero
    • Economia
    • First Amendment
  • People
    • Nuovo Mondo
  • Arts
    • Arte e Design
    • Spettacolo
    • Musica
    • Libri
    • Lingua Italiana
  • Lifestyles
    • Fashion
    • Scienza e Salute
    • Sport
    • Religioni
  • Food & Wine
  • Travel
    • Italia
  • Mediterraneo
  • English
  • Search/Archive
  • About us
    • Editorial Staff
    • President
    • Administration
    • Advertising

VNY Media La Voce di New York © 2016 / 2025 — La testata fruisce dei contributi diretti editoria d.lgs. 70/2017
Main Office: 230 Park Avenue, 21floor, New York, NY 10169 | Editorial Office/Redazione: UN Secretariat Building, International Press Corps S-301, New York, NY 10017 | 112 East 71, Street Suite 1A, New York, NY 10021

VNY Media La Voce di New York © 2016 / 2025
La testata fruisce dei contributi diretti editoria d.lgs. 70/2017

Main Office: 230 Park Avenue, 21floor, New York, NY 10169 | Editorial Office/Redazione: UN Secretariat Building, International Press Corps S-301, New York, NY 10017 | 112 East 71, Street Suite 1A, New York, NY 10021

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
La Voce di New York
Gestisci Consenso
Per fornire le migliori esperienze, utilizziamo tecnologie come i cookie per memorizzare e/o accedere alle informazioni del dispositivo. Il consenso a queste tecnologie ci permetterà di elaborare dati come il comportamento di navigazione o ID unici su questo sito. Non acconsentire o ritirare il consenso può influire negativamente su alcune caratteristiche e funzioni.
Funzionale Always active
L'archiviazione tecnica o l'accesso sono strettamente necessari al fine legittimo di consentire l'uso di un servizio specifico esplicitamente richiesto dall'abbonato o dall'utente, o al solo scopo di effettuare la trasmissione di una comunicazione su una rete di comunicazione elettronica.
Preferenze
L'archiviazione tecnica o l'accesso sono necessari per lo scopo legittimo di memorizzare le preferenze che non sono richieste dall'abbonato o dall'utente.
Statistiche
L'archiviazione tecnica o l'accesso che viene utilizzato esclusivamente per scopi statistici. L'archiviazione tecnica o l'accesso che viene utilizzato esclusivamente per scopi statistici anonimi. Senza un mandato di comparizione, una conformità volontaria da parte del vostro Fornitore di Servizi Internet, o ulteriori registrazioni da parte di terzi, le informazioni memorizzate o recuperate per questo scopo da sole non possono di solito essere utilizzate per l'identificazione.
Marketing
L'archiviazione tecnica o l'accesso sono necessari per creare profili di utenti per inviare pubblicità, o per tracciare l'utente su un sito web o su diversi siti web per scopi di marketing simili.
Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes
Visualizza preferenze
{title} {title} {title}
La Voce di New York
Gestisci Consenso
Per fornire le migliori esperienze, utilizziamo tecnologie come i cookie per memorizzare e/o accedere alle informazioni del dispositivo. Il consenso a queste tecnologie ci permetterà di elaborare dati come il comportamento di navigazione o ID unici su questo sito. Non acconsentire o ritirare il consenso può influire negativamente su alcune caratteristiche e funzioni.
Funzionale Always active
L'archiviazione tecnica o l'accesso sono strettamente necessari al fine legittimo di consentire l'uso di un servizio specifico esplicitamente richiesto dall'abbonato o dall'utente, o al solo scopo di effettuare la trasmissione di una comunicazione su una rete di comunicazione elettronica.
Preferenze
L'archiviazione tecnica o l'accesso sono necessari per lo scopo legittimo di memorizzare le preferenze che non sono richieste dall'abbonato o dall'utente.
Statistiche
L'archiviazione tecnica o l'accesso che viene utilizzato esclusivamente per scopi statistici. L'archiviazione tecnica o l'accesso che viene utilizzato esclusivamente per scopi statistici anonimi. Senza un mandato di comparizione, una conformità volontaria da parte del vostro Fornitore di Servizi Internet, o ulteriori registrazioni da parte di terzi, le informazioni memorizzate o recuperate per questo scopo da sole non possono di solito essere utilizzate per l'identificazione.
Marketing
L'archiviazione tecnica o l'accesso sono necessari per creare profili di utenti per inviare pubblicità, o per tracciare l'utente su un sito web o su diversi siti web per scopi di marketing simili.
Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes
Visualizza preferenze
{title} {title} {title}
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • New York
  • Onu
  • News
    • Primo Piano
    • Politica
    • Economia
    • First Amendment
  • Arts
    • Arte e Design
    • Spettacolo
    • Musica
    • Libri
  • Lifestyles
    • Fashion
    • Scienza e Salute
    • Sport
    • Religioni
  • Food & Wine
    • Cucina Italiana
  • Travel
    • Italia
  • Video
  • English
    • Arts
    • Business
    • Entertainment
    • Food & Wine
    • Letters
    • Lifestyles
    • Mediterranean
    • New York
    • News
  • Subscribe for only $6/Year

© 2016/2022 VNY Media La Voce di New York

Are you sure want to unlock this post?
Unlock left : 0
Are you sure want to cancel subscription?