Unit II: (20th c.) Expressionist Theater >> Theater of the Absurd

Pirandello's Six Characters and Modernist Theater

• German Expressionism (1905-ca. 1920)

• Antonin Artaud (1896-1948): Theater of Cruelty

• -Mise-en-scène (putting into scene)

• Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956): Verfremdungseffekt (alienation effect)

• Teatro Stabile movement (1898-1920): theater in Italian that was concerned with moral and spiritual issues, not about box office demand

• Sigmund Freud (1856-1939): Psychoanalysis

• Constantin Stanislavski (1863-1938): Method acting

• not a "well-made play" (pièce bien faite)

• related to Dada and Surrealism

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919)

- Expressionism/Modernism

- Setting: angles, light and shadow, distorted “reality”

- WWI aftermath: uncertainty, fascism, mental instability

- Psychoanalysis and the uncanny

- Same question as Pirandello: Is it possible to stage “reality”? What is “reality”?

I: Luigi Pirandello

(1867-1936)

- Born in Sicily

- 1887-1991: University in Rome and Bonn

- 1894: Marries Antonietta Portulano

- 1904: first novel

- 1914-17: Sons POW in WWI and wife growing insane

- 1919: Wife in mental institution

- 1921: Six Characters in Search of an Author

- 1923: Henry IV; joined fascist party

- 1934: Opera libretto criticized by fascist authorities; doesn’t support Mussolini’s march into Ethiopia 

[I]n dramatic art, what is staging if not a huge,
living illustration in action? What are the actors
if not illustrators in their own right?
But necessary illustrators in this case, alas. [ . . . ]
Unfortunately, there always has to be a[n]
unavoidable element that intrudes between the
dramatic author and his creation in the material
being of the performance: the actor”

(qtd. in “Illustrators, Actors, Translators,” Luigi Pirandello in the Theatre: a Documentary Record,
eds. S. Bassnett and J. Lorch, [Philadelphia: Harwood, 1993] 26-7).

Questions:

What’s the plot of the play?

Why do the characters need an author?

Why are there no names assigned to the characters?

Why do the characters think they’re immortal?

Is there a parallel to predestination/Calvinism?

Why do the characters choose the manager to help them?

Why do the characters need an author now?