Pirandello is a free adaptation of The Late Mattia Pascal, a book written by Pirandello in 1904. It’s a delirium about the possibility of reinventing ourselves – of having an unstable identity. On a trip to temporarily get away from his unhappy life, Mattia Pascal wins a small fortune in a casino and, when he returns rich, he comes across his own funeral. He sees it as an opportunity to start a new life, somewhere else, without a past other than the one he himself will invent. His new life forces him to lie constantly, showing that he has entered into a fiction, that he has made his life into a kind of theatre. As the narrative moves away from verisimilitude, the scenario becomes progressively three-dimensional. Pirandello is an experiment in meta-theatricality around a non-dramatic text by the most meta-theatrical playwright of the 20th century. The fictional abyss that characterises the novel is overlaid with a meta-theatricality that is not the one Pirandello uses in his own dramatic texts, but another, invented from the non-dramatic narrative.

direction Jorge Andrade, with assistance from David Cabecinha ‧ from The Late Mattia Pascal, by Luigi Pirandello ‧ with Anabela Almeida, Custódia Gallego, David Cabecinha, David Pereira Bastos, Jorge Andrade, Marco Paiva, Maria Ana Filipe, Mónica Garnel, Tânia Alves and Joana Costa Santos ‧ set design José Capela, with image editing by António MV and José Carlos Duarte ‧ costumes José Capela ‧ light João d’Almeida ‧ soundtrack Rui Lima and Sérgio Martins, with the participation from students of Escola de Música do Conservatório Nacional ‧ promotional image António MV, with photograps of José Carlos Duarte ‧ production Joana Costa Santos ‧ production assistance and communication Jonathan da Costa ‧ management and programming consultancy Vânia Rodrigues ‧ coproduction Teatro Nacional D. Maria II ‧ support Apametal, Escola de Música do Conservatório Nacional, Sociedade Filarmónica Comércio e Indústria da Amadora, Teatro Nacional São João ‧

datasdates

March 12 to April 4, 2015 ‧ Teatro Nacional D. Maria II (Lisbon)

June 3 and 4, 2016 ‧ Teatro Municipal do Porto - Rivoli