Pirandello wrote The Rules of the Game in 1918: the plot centred on an intricate love triangle involving Leone Gala, his wife Silia and her lover Guido Venanzi.
Leone, a detached and rational philosopher, accepts his wife Silia’s infidelity with apparent indifference, living separately from her but in the same apartment, in a sort of role-playing game in which each plays a role.
Silia, dissatisfied with Leone’s coldness and longing for more freedom, plots to get rid of her husband by involving her lover Guido in a plan to kill Leone.
Leone, however, senses the couple’s intentions and, through clever manipulation, manages to turn the tables.
Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936), an Italian playwright, novelist and essayist, is renowned for his groundbreaking contributions to 20th-century literature and theatre. His work is characterized by a profound examination of the human psyche and the subjective nature of reality. Among his most read novels, The Late Mattia Pascal (1904) and One, No One and a Hundred Thousand (1926). He is also celebrated for his numerous plays, such as Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) and Henry IV (1922).
Pirandello’s theatre is distinguished by its exploration of identity, illusion and reality. His works profoundly influenced contemporary theatre and anticipated many of the techniques used in theatre throughout the 20th century.
Pirandello received numerous awards for his work, culminating with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934. He died in Rome in 1936, leaving a lasting legacy that continues to inspire writers, playwrights and thinkers worldwide.
Paolo Bignamini. Theatre director, journalist and playwright. Investigates the relationship between time and space on stage, particularly in 20th-century French dramaturgy. His directing credits include Hiroshima mon amour by Marguerite Duras; “We will be happy but who knows when” by Biljana Srbljanovic; Solaris by Lem/Tarkosvkij/Sinisi. He is the curator of “Books on Stage”, an Italian-language theatre festival in Freiburg. Among his directions with PACTA: You Don’t Know How by Pirandello and The Surprise of Love by Marivaux.
PACTA Arsenale dei Teatri, known as PACTA . dei Teatri, is a professional organisation financed by the MiC’s National Live Show Fund. As a multi-purpose cultural centre, it is part of the main theatres of the Milan Theatre System affiliated with the City of Milan and promoted as an organization of regional relevance by the Lombardy Region.
Annig Raimondi. Actress, director and lecturer, she is the founder of PACTA. dei Teatri. She has been its artistic director since 2016, operating from the Salone in via Dini Milan. She curates PACTA’s Theatre Seasons and projects. Which include works by Sartre, Artaud, T.S. Eliot, Pirandello, Moravia, and DonneTeatroDiritti.
Riccardo Magherini. Actor, director, and teacher. He holds a Diploma from Scuola Piccolo Teatro Milan. He has worked with Piccolo Teatro, Gruppo della Rocca, and Stabile di Roma, collaborating with directors Strehler, G. Solari, W. Pagliaro, V. Liberti, L. Muscato.
Antonio Rosti. He obtained a Diploma from Piccolo Teatro School of Milan. He has been directed by Fo, Petri, Cecchi, Parenti, De Bosio, B. Stetka, A. Longoni, Shammah, Syxty, Schmidt. He collaborates with Stabile di Genova, VenetoTeatro, Litta, Cooperativa.
LEONE: […] Look, imagine for a moment that you suddenly notice an egg hurtling through the air straight towards you –
GUIDO: -An egg?
LEONE: Yes, an egg. A fresh one.
[…]
Well, now, if you’re not prepared to catch the egg, what happens? Either you stand still and the egg hits you and smashes, or you duck and it misses you and smashes on the ground. In either case the result is a wasted egg. But if you are prepared, you catch it, and then […] you can simply pierce it at each end and suck out the yolk. What’s left in your hand then?
GUIDO: The empty shell.
It is laughable that life does not allow itself to be harnessed in any form: even if we manage to grasp it, it turns out to be an inert shell, like that of an egg emptied of its contents, which we can only crush and throw away. There are no winners in the play of the parts, only the bitterness of a shared condition: the resigned serenity of Leone Gala, whose solitary breakfast at the end of the play seals – not without a cruel, insistent irony – the common existential outcome, a destiny from which there is no escape.
Time: TBD
On stage: 3 March 2025
Production: PACTA dei Teatri
Director: Paolo Bignamini
Full cast: Riccardo Magherini, Annig Raimondi, Antonio Rosti
annig.raimondi@pacta.org
by Deverust Studio