This chapter explores Pirandello’s idiosyncratic relationship with fame by attempting to separate the artist and the man. Pirandello’s alleged unpretentious behavior and apparent dismissiveness often clashed with his fervent desire to be appreciated and recognized for his exceptional talent. Beginning with Pirandello’s relationship with the press and the political powers ruling Italy at that time, this chapter discusses the artist’s apprehension about the lure of fame and its corrosive effect on his true self. Likewise, in his fictional works Pirandello dramatized his own concerns about creating an artistic persona while attempting to tame the creative compulsion that often jarred his preoccupation with greatness. If at one point his celebrity status seemed to have become a burden and not even exile proved to be the cure to his resentment, Pirandello took refuge in his art, the only ambivalent space where his thirst for recognition could coexist with his awareness of the drawbacks of being famous.

This essay examines Pirandello’s tortuous relationship with the United States as it emerges in his personal experiences and in his literary works. In spite of the triumphal welcome Pirandello received on his visits to the United States in 1923 and 1935, his attitude toward the country was fraught with skepticism and ambivalence. Unsettled by the threat of US neo-colonization of lands and cultures, and associating American civilization with blind enthusiasm for technology unaccompanied by a concomitant moral growth, Pirandello expressed his scarce admiration for a country and a people whose favor and financial support he nonetheless hoped to gain. In Pirandello’s fiction, America is a place whose opportunities come at the price of loneliness, exploitation, and difficult compromises. The essay also delves into Pirandello’s reception in the New World in the 1930s, a time that required him to articulate his position on Fascism before an American audience.

Luigi Pirandello is not often linked to George Bernard Shaw, although they did communicate through notes on one occasion, with Shaw expressing himself in a mélange of operatic French, German, and Italian, the last of which gave Pirandello much entertainment. Both playwrights admired and liked one another; Shaw praised Six Characters as the most original play he had encountered, while Pirandello greatly admired Saint Joan and wanted Marta Abba to perform the part. The New York Times invited Pirandello to write an essay on Shaw’s play, which Pirandello concluded with the assertion that Saint Joan was “a work of poetry from beginning to end.” Further consideration of how Shaw’s plays related to Pirandello’s reveals that, in spite of Pirandello’s despairing view of the human condition, which Pirandello constantly mocked as futile, one can discover moments of humor that often resemble Shaw’s comedic style.

The introduction of Pirandello’s works to Latin America started in earnest after the controversial Italian success of Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921), which was then staged by Dario Niccodemi’s company in Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Rio de Janeiro. When Pirandello’s newly established Teatro d’Arte found itself in serious financial trouble in 1927, it welcomed the proposal by the Teatro Odeón in Buenos Aires for a tour that promised to cover the deficit. On his first trip to South America the author sparked a fervor that made him the tour’s protagonist while dispelling the perception of his theatre as simply a conduit for Fascist propaganda. Pirandello’s second trip to Argentina in 1933 saw the author directing the successful world premiere of When One Is Somebody, which had not yet found an Italian production due to its autobiographical content and heavy technical requirements. An important connection between Pirandello and the Buenos Aires professional theatre scene was actor Luis Arata, whose company systematically offered his plays between the 1930s and 1940s. Over time, Pirandellian productions gradually spread across the official, commercial, and independent circuits, and Pirandellian tropes have continued to influence Argentine playwriting to this day.

The chapter considers Pirandello’s unsuccessful attempts to establish a national theatre in Italy. Influenced by examples of national theatres in other countries such as the Comédie Française in France and disappointed with the lack of financial resources to sustain his own very successful Teatro d’Arte, Pirandello tried to use Mussolini’s influence and the rise of Fascism to create a national theatre run by himself with full state sponsorship. He developed elaborate plans for a national theatre that would operate in three major cities and house ensemble casts, some of whose members would travel between the cities to facilitate touring productions. The plans would have involved considerable expenditure, including the costs of establishing the technical infrastructure for the three theatres as well as of maintaining three ensembles of actors. Despite initial encouragement and support from Mussolini, Pirandello encountered competition from other entrepreneurs and artists and political opposition, and eventually failed to achieve his goal.

This chapter explores a key aspect of Pirandello’s relationship with the Fascist regime. In 1926, Benito Mussolini created the Royal Italian Academy (the Academy), to rival the prestigious national academies of other European countries such as France and Britain. Pirandello was the most famous appointee amongst the first thirty nominations of accademici in March 1929. The chapter traces Pirandello’s ambivalent attitude toward the Academy. On the one hand, he considered it just recognition of both his fame as an author and his early support of Fascism. On the other, he was skeptical of the usefulness of a national academy, especially if it bent to the will of the Fascist regime. The chapter reconstructs several episodes showing how Pirandello’s status as an accademico was related to his hopes of taking a leading role in the renewal of Italian theatre. His correspondence with his son Stefano and his confidant and muse Marta Abba reveals Pirandello’s low opinion of the rhetoric and emptiness of Fascist cultural policies, of which the Academy was a prime example.

Focusing largely on an extraordinary epistolary collection, this chapter discusses the relationship between Luigi Pirandello and Marta Abba and, in particular, the impact she had on his dramatic writing. The author’s acquaintance with Marta Abba, which began in 1925, arguably changed the trajectory of his work as a playwright: From that point on, he would increasingly center his plays on female characters, many of which he wrote explicitly for Abba and in her likeness. Her importance in his life can be seen in their letters, which reveal their bond, their deep respect for one another as colleagues and as experts in theatrical matters, and the extent to which he valued her perspective as he crafted his new plays. At the same time, one can glimpse in the plays how Pirandello’s unreciprocated romantic feelings for his muse and star actress shaped his conception of artistic creation as a substitute for love, desire, and procreation.