[Epic symbols (Vietnam 2017). Foto Rb]
Italian Twentieth-century
playwright Luigi Pirandello
(1867-1936), born one-hundred and fifty years ago this year, had “immeasurable”
influence on contemporary world drama. According to Robert Brustein:
“In his agony over the nature of existence,
he anticipates Sartre and Camus; in his insights into the disintegration of
personality and the isolation of man, he anticipates Samuel Beckett; in his
unremitting war on language, theory, concepts, and the collective mind, he
anticipates Eugene Ionesco; in his approach to the conflict of truth and
illusion, he anticipates Eugene O’Neill (and later, Harold Pinter and Edward
Albee); in his experiment with the theatre, he anticipates a host of
experimental dramatist, including Thornton Wilder and Jack Gelber; in his use
of the interplay between actors and characters, he anticipates Jean Anouilh; in
his view of the tension between public mask and private face, he anticipates
Jean Giraudoux; and in his concept of man as a role-playing animal, he
anticipates Jean Genet”.[1]
This is all true. However,
possibly the most important contribution that Pirandello’s theatre gave to
posterity was his anticipation of Bertolt Brecht’s epic theatre.[2] I
will hereby illustrate in which way Pirandello’s theatre can be defined as epic
and what is the connection between the work of the two playwrights.
According to Peter Szondi, classic drama is
“the literary form embodying the (1) always present, (2) interpersonal, (3)
event”.[3]
Drama came into being in the Renaissance as “the result of a bold intellectual
effort made by a newly self-conscious being who, after the collapse of the
medieval worldview, sought to create an artistic reality within which he could
fix and mirror himself on the basis of interpersonal relationships alone”.[4]
At a time in which the sphere of the “between”, or interpersonal relationship, was
the most important aspect of man’s humanity, drama sought to express it through
dramatic dialogue. Dialogue is indeed the main linguistic and structural
feature of classic drama.
The other important feature of drama is its
“absolute” nature. Drama is “always present”: past events are not performed, even
though they might be mentioned during the characters’ dialogue; events occurring
in the outside world are not performed and do not enter the realm of dramatic
action. Drama is the event or, to put it in Szondi’s words, drama is “primary”.
It is not a representation of something else. It is itself. Classic drama does not imply the presence of
a dramatist or an author: “Ultimately the whole world of the Drama is
dialectical in origin. It does not come into being because of an epic I which permeates the work”.[5]
This theatrical model starts its decline at
the end of the XIX century, along with the crisis of contemporary man who loses
his/her centrality and starts questioning traditional forms of social
aggregation such as the family. According to Szondi, the crisis of traditional
drama is made apparent by the intrusion of narrative or epic elements in its
structure. So, while classic drama used to be pure action taking place in the
present, on the stage, in front of an audience, making no reference to the
outside world and expressing its interpersonal nature through the dominance of
dialogue, contemporary drama puts on stage troubled individuals who have lost
the sense of their centrality in the world, have become more aware of their
subconscious thoughts, of the importance of their past, and tend to reflect on
the nature of relationships rather than engaging with them. Monologue becomes
dominant in contemporary play, or monologue disguised as dialogue. Characters
indulge in detailed descriptions of their inner world and talk about the
motives of their actions. The past dominates the present and sometimes blocks
the dramatic action. All these elements of dramatic action are considered
narrative or epic by Szondi because
they are descriptive in nature and they imply the presence of an author behind
them.
Pirandello’s masterpiece Six characters in search of an author is
a classic example of the new epic drama. It declares its epic nature beginning
with its title. We have not even sat down to watch the play and we already know
that there is an author, an epic I,
who has created the characters, and there are six characters looking for him.
The title of Pirandello’s play is therefore our gateway to contemporary drama.
Dialogue is very important in the play but,
as one of the characters explains, it is pointless in the modern world as it
has lost its communicative function. Everyone uses a different set of values
and ideas to decode other people’s words, and communication is therefore bound
to fail:
“IL PADRE: Ma se è tutto qui il
male. Nelle parole! Abbiamo tutti dentro un mondo di cose; ciascuno un suo
mondo di cose! E come possiamo intenderci, signore, se nelle parole ch’io dico
metto il senso e il valore delle cose come sono dentro di me; mentre chi le
ascolta, inevitabilmente le assume col senso e col valore che hanno per sè, del
mondo com’egli l’ha dentro? Crediamo
d’intenderci; non c’intendiamo mai!”[6]
As regards the unity of time, the play which
the actors are attempting to perform is a past traumatic event, thus there is continuous
reference to the fact that this event has already taken place in the past. Subsequently,
the plot of the sub-play enacted by the six characters is descriptive in
nature. It is a narration of something that has already happened rather than an
action happening in front of the audience’s eyes. Needless to say that the
characters’ interiority, their feelings towards their creator, their past
traumas and the company of actors who are attempting to rehearse the
characters’ play, are the real protagonists of the play. This is another
element that Szondi would define epic or narrative and therefore characteristic
of modern drama.
During the Twenties and Thirties, a new
theatre develops in Germany, France and Russia aiming to make extensive use of
the technological innovations introduced in scenic effects, stage architecture
and lighting by a number of avant-garde directors and authors such as Pitöeff,
Reinhardt, Piscator and Mejerchol’d. In particular, Erwin Piscator used a wide
range of technological innovations, including the projection of movies onto the
back of the stage, in order to draw his audience’s attention to the social and
economic conflicts that were troubling Europe between the two world wars. Through
use of multiple and rotating stages connected by bridges and stairs, Piscator intended
to perform simultaneously scenes happening in different locations. The
projection of historical or political movies was used to make reference to the
big political picture and raise the audience’s awareness about events happening
in the world outside the stage. Piscator was therefore breaking the unity of
place and time of traditional drama. Going back to Szondi’s model, Piscator was
making extensive use of narrative or epic devices and breaking the illusion
that an action was being performed in front of his audience, in the absolute
space of the present.
Along with these technological innovations,
another important change is introduced in European theatre with the appearance
of the stage manager who has the task to coordinate different aspects of the
performance including acting, text adaptation, scenic effects, lighting, make-up
and so on. This new role acquires so much importance, also due to the technological
innovations experimented by the avant-garde, that stage managers become true
divas who claim to be more important than playwrights, and show an inclination
to manipulate the text and the acting to the point of creating a play which may
be quite different from the one conceived by the author.
Pirandello, who was fascinated by the
technological innovations introduced in European theatre during the Twenties
and had emphasized the importance of the stage manager in Six characters, is not ready to embrace either the political use of
technology promoted by Piscator or the dominant role of the stage director theorized
by the European avant-garde. His experiments with lights, scenic effects,
multiple stages or bridges connecting the stage and the audience, aim to
reproduce on stage the dreamlike, surreal and subconscious quality of a
fantastic world that mirrors as much as possible the space of the author’s mind,
where the characters were born. This idea of theatre as a dreamlike and surreal
space becomes more and more defined in Pirandello’s poetics. When Pirandello
adopted the innovations of Piscator’s theatre, especially in the play Tonight We Improvise (1930), he did not
seem to embrace the ideology and the poetics behind it.
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) follows on from
Piscator’s efforts and brings his concepts to maturity. Brecht draws his
audience’s attention to the alienation and fallacy of social processes. His
theatre is pedagogical and didactic. His aim is to express a definite message
to his audience. His theatre is therefore descriptive and “epic” in nature. To raise
his audience’s awareness about the socio-political issues dealt with in his
plays, Brecht uses the stage as a narrator. As a narrator would interrupt the dramatic
action and describe or explain what is happening on the stage from a social
viewpoint, in Brecht’s epic theatre every single component of the theatrical
device such as the script, acting, make-up, costumes, lighting, billboards, the
projection of movies, fulfil the same
function as a narrator. So, for example, an actor might interrupt the scenic
action to turn around to the audience and address a point of social concern,
the movie projected on the backstage might be of a political nature, the
costumes worn by the actors might reveal the true nature of the characters’
personality beyond the appearance of their role. All these aspects contribute
to conjure up what Brecht calls “alienation effect”, Verfremdungseffekt, which
encourages the audience to watch the play with an active rather than passive
attitude, learn about the fallacy of social processes, develop a critical
conscience and adopt a constructive attitude in everyday life that will help
them change the same processes.
Akin to Brecht and Piscator, Pirandello’s theatre
explodes the form of classic drama and, as Szondi claims, enacts the
“impossibility of the drama”, especially in the Six characters. However, Pirandello’s search of a new poetics, after
declaring the death of traditional theatre, goes in a different direction than
the one indicated by Brecht. Pirandello does not ratify a political or social
use of drama. After the trilogy of the theatre within the theatre, or meta-theatre,
Pirandello will go back to the magical and ritualistic roots of theatre and
will discover the theatre as a semi-mystical and evocative experience.
The connection between Pirandello and
Brecht’s theatre is therefore to be found in the critical attitude that both
playwrights had towards traditional forms of theatre, and their subsequent
deconstruction of the dramatic form which mirrored and signified a
deconstruction of the dramatic content. I am thinking of a specific character
acting as the critical conscience of the drama in Pirandello’s theatre – the
“epic character” or “choir character” – which becomes every single character in Brecht’s theatre. In the Six Characters the role of the epic
character is that of the Capocomico [Stage Manager] who keeps bringing the
audience’s attention to the deeper meaning of the play, as per the intentions
of the playwright. Thus, the Capocomico emphasizes the “narrative” or
descriptive nature of the story that the Six
Characters are trying to perform in front of the actors, and the
impossibility to perform it. In sum, through the Capocomico, Pirandello intends
to refer to the crisis and death of traditional drama that has become epic or
narrative in nature and is therefore impossible to perform. In the following
passage, the Capocomico interrupts the memory of the stepdaughter who is
recollecting his meetings with the stepfather as a young girl outside her school:
“IL CAPOCOMICO: Ma tutto questo è
racconto, signori miei!
IL FIGLIO (sprezzante). Ma sì,
letteratura! Letteratura!
IL PADRE. Ma che letteratura!
Questa è vita, signore! Passione!
The role of the Pirandellian Capocomico is
performed in Brecht’s theatre by all the characters in the play that adopt a
critical attitude towards the content of their performance and continuously
voice the playwright’s concerns about the social processes represented on
stage. Thus, Pirandello’s epic character is the predecessor of Brecht’s epic
stage and epic acting. This is an important legacy if we consider the enormous
significance that Brecht’s epic theatre has had in contemporary dramaturgy.
[2] On the topic of Pirandello’s influence on
Brecht’s theatre, see P. Chiarini, Pirandello e Brecht, in Atti del Congresso internazionale di
studi pirandelliani: Venezia (2-5 ottobre 1961), Le Monnier, Firenze: 317-41, 1967.
[6] L. Pirandello, Three Plays. Sei
Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore, Enrico IV and La Giara, edited by Felicity Firth,
Manchester University Press, 1969, p. 21.
[7] Ibid., p. 25.
