
Luigi Pirandello
Writing
Biography
Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, poet, and short story writer, best known for his many acclaimed stage plays and several successful novels such as The Late Mattia Pascal (1904) and One, No One and One Hundred Thousand (1926). He was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his almost magical power to turn psychological analysis into good theatre." Pirandello's works include about 40 plays, some of which are written in Sicilian. Pirandello's tragic farces are often seen as forerunners of the Theatre of the Absurd. His first major play, Right You Are (if You Think You Are) (1917), explored the relativity of truth, a lifelong subject for Pirandello. Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) contrasted art and life; it was followed by the tragedy Henry IV (1922). His other plays include Each in His Own Way (1924) and Tonight We Improvise (1930). He established the Teatro d’Arte in Rome and toured the world with his company (1925–27). Nearly all of Pirandello's plays were translated into English by the actor Robert Rietti.
Known For

Theatre 625 is a British television drama anthology series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC2 from 1964 to 1968. It was one of the first regular programmes in the line-up of the channel, and the title referred to its production and transmission being in the higher-definition 625-line format, which only BBC2 used at the time.
Theatre 625

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Alta comedia

Greek television series
Monday's Theater

Five stories center on a werewolf, a feudal landlord, peasants, a ghost, and a mother and her sons.
Kaos

Four nuns are raped by a group of lepers. Although they all turn out to be pregnant, their status is hidden from them in the convent.
The Humiliated

Two segments: In the first one Felice, a baritone who has had to give up his career because of a heart condition and now works as an accountant at the Opera, inexplicably spends his nights laughing in his sleep. When his best friend, a cripple, takes his life and his wife abandons him Felice decides to die himself. In the second segment two kidnappings in Sicily, the second of which took place a century before the present one, are compared.
You Laugh

In present-day U.S., Dr. Michael Parker, a prominent surgeon, unexpectedly runs into his German-born wife whom he thought was dead. Victor, an artist and his "dead" wife's now boyfriend, berates Dr. Parker for "killing" her. The bulk of the story flashes back to Austria during World War II as we learn how Dr. Parker met and married his wife, and the one mistake that may have cost him his family.
Never Say Goodbye

The charming Adriana gets sick after her husband's death. Her brother-in-law takes her on a journey to meet a doctor, while love overwhelms them.
The Voyage

A tale of the three funerals for the ashes of Italian writer Luigi Pirandello intertwined with a murder committed by a young Sicilian immigrant boy in 1930s Brooklyn for what is described as a surreal, grotesque, complex narrative.
Leonora addio

A film made up of four episodes: a jar repairer gets trapped in a vat because of his hunch; a young unmarried mother is forced to beg to buy herself a fan; Rosario Chiarchiaro appears before a law court for casting spells; the discomfort of an overtight jacket gives a wedding witness the strength to persuade the bridegroom's reluctant parents to bless his union.
Of Life and Love

A number of different segments taken from 19th century Italian stories.
Times Gone By

In late 19th century Sicily, handsome free-spirit Liolà wanders into town, where he encounters an old flame now married to a wealthy landowner.
A Very Handy Man

Rome, early 20th century: a wealthy psychiatrist, who runs an asylum for women and lacks imagination in his practice, must find a wet nurse for his infant when his wife panics after childbirth. He brings a peasant, Annette, to Rome, forcing her to leave her own baby behind. To the consternation and increasing anger of the wife, the nanny immediately bonds with the couple's infant son - Annette's a natural. Against a backdrop of leftist demonstrations, Annette, who's lover is a teacher jailed for subversion, asks the doctor to teach her to read and write. Her nature and curiosity, the doctor's bland ideas, he and his wife's problems, and the two infants bring the story to a head.
The Nanny

A childless couple struggle in the aftermath of a sexual assault leaves the woman pregnant.
The Choice

Bar entertainer Zara is a discontented alcoholic who is pursued by many men but lives with novelist Carl Salter. One day, Tony shows up on Salter's estate claiming that Zara is actually Maria, the wife of his close friend Bruno, claiming that her memory was destroyed during World War I. Zara doesn't remember but leaves with Tony to Salter's dismay. Bruno, now an officer in the Italian Army, tries to coax Maria's memory back on his large estate. No one is really sure if Zara is Maria, and when Salter shows up with a mental case from Trieste that he claims is the real Maria, everyone on Bruno's estate is desperately searching for the truth.
As You Desire Me

Based on 'Il fu Mattia Pascal', one of Pirandello's many stories concerning the transitory nature of the intangibles "truth" and "identity". Mattia Pascal is a downtrodden average man, treated like trash by his fiancée, scorned by his associates, and cheated out of his inheritance by contemptuous relatives. The dispirited Pascal heads to Monte Carlo, accruing a fortune and also assuming the identity of a less fortunate gambler who killed himself. The "new" Pascal is treated with a dignity and respect that overwhelms him--and nearly kills him.
The 2 Lives of Mattia Pascal

Dramatist Luigi Pirandello's mordant comedy of manners tells the tale of upper-crust Italians Silia Gala and her sneering spouse, Leone, who finds his impassivity tested when he has to duel his wife's frustrated paramour.
The Rules of the Game

On a set filled with tension, a nervous director tries to shoot a horror movie. Meanwhile, six strangers suddenly appear who tell their story, explaining that they are the characters of the script left by a dead author.
Six Characters

Deranged after a fall from a horse, a man has lived for twenty years in a castle laboring under the delusion that he is Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV. His psychiatrist concocts an elaborate scheme to shock him out of his medieval reverie.
Henry IV

A rehearsal is disrupted when six figures mysteriously appear on the stage, claiming to be fictional characters from an unfinished play searching for an author to tell their tragic story. An adaptation of the classic Luigi Pirandello play, updated to take place in a 1970s television studio.