INTERVIEW: NY production celebrates Pirandello’s work
Photo: Alex Might (Boy), Jennifer Jewell and Carleigh Chirico (Girl) star in Raison D’être: An Evening of Pirandello at Theatre 71 at Blessed Sacrament. Photo courtesy of Daniel Rader / Provided by GOGO PR with permission.
Luigi Pirandello was one of the most important and influential Italian playwrights of all time, and his work is currently being celebrated in a special evening titled Raison D’être: An Evening of Pirandello, playing through Sept. 29 at Theatre 71 at Blessed Sacrament in New York City.
The special showcase of Pirandello’s work, including Six Characters in Search of an Author, is directed by Patrick Mulryan and produced by Jennifer Jewell. The mashup celebration follows the structure of Six Characters, but also includes characters from the author’s other works, Chee-Chee and The Man With the Flower in his Mouth. The idea is that the unique amalgamation, translated by Roberto Di Donato and Giovanni Villari, will explore Pirandello’s fascination with different personas that people choose to wear, or they are forced to wear.
Recently, Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Jewell about the production. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
When did you first encounter Pirandello’s work?
I was first cast in Luigi Pirandello’s The Man With the Flower in his Mouth by Robert Di Donato, who is a J. Jewell Productions Company member and the translator of Raison D’Etre: An Evening of Pirandello, at HB Studios for Austin Pendleton’s Director’s Program. After performing this production at HB Studios, I was overwhelmed with Pirandello’s breadth and scope of work and simply could not stop him.
I continued working on Pirandello’s plays with my acting coach, Karl Bury, and continued reading everything that he wrote. Within six weeks of HB Studio’s performances, I thought that another of his one-act plays, entitled Chee-Chee, would be a great companion piece to The Man With a Flower in His Mouth. Chee-Chee explores the chaotic behaviors in human desires and is a great contrast to the stillness of human need that is seen in The Man With a Flower in His Mouth.
At the same time, I was reading and thinking about Pirandello’s most famous play, Six Characters in Search of an Author, which is a work that talks about life in the theater and whose original storyline is based on the rehearsing of a play inside a theater that gets interrupted by six characters who demand to be part of play.
So, the story of Six Characters in Search of an Author continued to wrap itself around the two one act plays, Chee-Chee and The Man With a Flower in His Mouth, until J Jewell Productions had a production meeting about producing a new play based on these three works. It grew into a new work featuring a unique translation, adaptation, choreography and original score.
What do you love most about Pirandello’s work?
I find that Pirandello’s work is like a tapestry. It all references each other. The more I read, the more I find, ‘Hey, that line was in such and such play, too.’ Many of the characters are dressed up as other characters in another play because we all wear many faces to get what we want in life. Pirandello asks the seemingly unanswerable questions of humanity: the who, what, when, where, why of human existence and how we relate to one another. It is an actor’s dream.
How would you describe the evening?
We begin the evening with the pre-show, developed by choreographer Allison Plamondon through exploration of the text and embodied by jarring gesticulations unique to each character. The audience is then invited into the experiential process of a rehearsal of two of Pirandello’s opposing one-act plays, the comedic Chee-Chee and the dramatic The Man With the Flower in his Mouth, which is interrupted by the imagination of what the author truly wishes to express on stage. It’s a Ping-Pong game of illusion vs. reality.
When did you realize you had a talent for acting and producing?
I’m a farmer’s kid. I grew up with land, animals and a vivid imagination. I don’t know if acting was ever anything I knew was a ‘thing,’ but creating an alternate universe was. Having the opportunity to grow up in the South in the 1970s in a farming community, there were countless real life characters I was in awe of and would mimic. I started writing as a kid. Producing came from necessity. If I wanted to get my art out there when I was older, I had to learn how to get it out there.
What would you say is the criteria for a production that you would back as a producer? What are you looking for in a show?
I have to love the story. Producing is 24/7. It’s a lot easier to work around the clock if you love it. My criteria are quite simple: Does it answer the who, what, when, where, why and how? I jot down the answers in a word or two. Does it have a beginning, middle and end? What are the relationships? Are they fully flushed out? Does the show have conflict?
Then there are also the logistical components of being a show producer. How much will the show cost to produce? This includes time and costs for workshopping the production through opening night. The cost is always more than a producer expects, so, you see, I really must love it.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Raison D’être: An Evening of Pirandello, directed by Patrick Mulryan and produced by Jennifer Jewell runs through Sept. 29 at Theatre 71 at Blessed Sacrament at 152 W. 71st St. in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
