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Wily peasants, feisty pessimists, frustrated rural sophists, and the entire masquerade of a sadly comic humanity-without-props make up this delightful and valuable collection of all 13 one-act plays by the Italian master.
How much truth and how much illusion does a persion need to live a balanced life. Four actors sit on a darkened stage, awaiting the arrival of the stage manager who has called them together. Lacking his authoritative presence they are merely characters in search of a play to become part of, for their own personalities seem unformed and shallow next to the full-blooded figures they are used to playing. They are also "types," and each of them has absorbed most of what he is from what he pretends to be on the stage. As they wait, the stage lights come up--but still no one appears to tell them what they are to do. They know only that they are not to leave the stage until they have "acted out the play." Suddenly becoming aware that an audience is present, the actors decide to improvise, an idea which finds them slightly flustered. Ernest, the "leading man," exercises the prerogative of star billing and assumes command. He plunges ahead, assigning roles to himself and his colleagues--Winifred, who always plays the "leading lady's best friend"; Lora, the struggling ingenue; and Tony, the juvenile lead. The "drama" which unfolds is a mixture of truth, fantasy and well-rehearsed situations, but out of it, in subtle progression, comes a deepening awareness of the real people behind the theatrical facades.
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Suicide, the act of killing oneself voluntarily and intentionally, is clearly one of the most important themes developed by Pirandello during his long literary career. Although he never focused on self-destruction as an end in itself, he made ample use of it to dramatise his tragic view of the human condition. Indeed, this theme recurs with astonishing frequency in his short stories, play and novels. It even appears sporadically in his poetry.
In this poignant and personal history of one of America’s oldest theaters, Leslie Stainton captures the story not just of an extraordinary building but of a nation’s tumultuous struggle to invent itself. Built in 1852 and in use ever since, the Fulton Theatre in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is uniquely ghosted. Its foundations were once the walls of a colonial jail that in 1763 witnessed the massacre of the last surviving Conestoga Indians. Those same walls later served to incarcerate fugitive slaves. Staging Ground explores these tragic events and their enduring resonance in a building that later became a town hall, theater, and movie house—the site of minstrel shows, productions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, oratory by the likes of Thaddeus Stevens and Mark Twain, performances by Buffalo Bill and his troupe of “Wild Indians,” Hollywood Westerns, and twenty-first-century musicals. Interweaving past and present, private anecdote and public record, Stainton unfolds the story of this emblematic space, where for more than 250 years Americans scripted and rescripted their history. Staging Ground sheds light on issues that continue to form us as a people: the evolution of American culture and faith, the immigrant experience, the growth of cities, the emergence of women in art and society, the spread of advertising, the flowering of transportation and technology, and the abiding paradox of a nation founded on the principle of equality for “all men,” yet engaged in the slave trade and in the systematic oppression of the American Indian.
This special one-volume edition features five great plays by one of the most celebrated and fascinating dramatists of the twentieth century. Pirandello, awarded the Nobel Prize in 1934, was the playwright par excellence of the conflict between illusion and reality. His modern and sensationally original plays dramatize with force and eloquence the isolation of the individual from society and from himself. The editor, Eric Bentley, is an international theater authority. In addition to the Introduction and the biographical and bibliographical material in the Appendices, Mr. Bentley has prepared for this volume the first English translations of the play Liolà and Pirandello’s important “Preface” to Six Characters in Search of an Author. Included Plays: Liolà It Is So! (If You Think So) Henry IV Six Characters in Search of an Author Each in His Own Way
Elma is a singer in a sleazy 1930s Berlin nighclub. Having suffered an appalling assault during the First World War, she has no memory of her former life. A man appears and tells her that she is, in fact, the wife of an Italian aristocrat, and a new life awaits her. But when she goes to Italy to pursue this dream, she is greeted only by problems and disappointments. Pirandello uses this story to explore the mysteries of identity and memory, themes that preoccupied him throughout his life. Hugh Whitemore's version premiered in London's West End in 2005 in a production starring Kristen Scott Thomas and Bob Hoskins. His other plays include Stevie, Pack of Liars, Breaking the Code and A Letter of Resignation. He has also written many film and TV scripts.