San Vito Lo Capo, Sicily.
On May 26th, 2026, the show directed by Anna Graziano will be staged. The play is written by Claudio Proietti. We interviewed the director to learn more about this show.
Anna, have you ever staged a work by Luigi Pirandello?
Not yet, but he is an author I have read and studied thoroughly over the years. I even dedicated my diploma work to him for I consider Pirandello one of the most important and fascinating playwrights in the theatre’s history. I am in love with his concept of irony, a fine line between a smile and a grimace of pain, as it happens in the image of the “rouged old woman,” one of the most intense and human reflections of his poetics, which I will in fact refer to in the show. His ability to explore human identity, the contradictions of existence, and the relationship between reality and appearance go on moving me profoundly even today.
However, this is a show in which Luigi Pirandello is among the leading characters. What is, for you, the specific feature of this invention for the stage?
Seeing Luigi Pirandello as a character and not just as an author gives him back a fully human and three-dimensional image: he is no longer just voice and thought, but body, emotion, and relationship. At first, he appears on stage as a ghost, a vibration that struggles to take form — “it is difficult to re-enter one’s own body, very difficult” — then he slowly takes shape and becomes a man. In this human and concrete world he enters into a relationship with the young author Nino, becoming for him not an abstract figure but a living guide. In the end, from a human shape he comes back to the ghostly one, until he dissolves again into a pure vibration.
Who is Luigi Pirandello for you, and how do you portray him on stage?
For me, is is deeply tied to my land: he represents Sicily, its light and its shadows, our way of thinking and living.. I recognize in him our humor, a Sicilian ability to smile while feeling pain, to live contradictions without ever ceasing to question them. On stage I bring him through strength, passion, the intelligence, and irony of the Sicilian people, as if he were an ancient voice still breathing and telling a story.
How did your collaboration with Claudio Proietti, author of the tplay on Pirandello, come about?
It was born almost by chance: we met thanks to my partner Giuseppe Battiloro. An immediate dialogue and a natural artistic affinity came to life. It was me who proposed to Claudio Proietti directing his play .
Who are the actors of this show and how did you select them?
The are Giuseppe Battiloro, my partner, and Emanuele Modica, a young actor I have seen grow up thanks to my friendship with his mother. The choice came about naturally: from, on one hand, my trust and artistic harmony with Giuseppe; on the other, my attention and curiosity toward the path of Emanuele who brought energy, sensitivity, and authenticity to the stage.
How does this show fit into your director’s career?
“Pirandello and a young author” is my fourth direction, after a ten-year break from the direction of “Fly Free” based on the idea of Pino Misano Grassi and Anna Giordano written and directed by me. I come to direct this show after a long time of inner waiting:. I have always felt close to me the contents of this play, thus, today, it finally seems to have found its breath. My vision of it is a quantum existence in which life and death touch and coexist on invisible frequencies, the way Pirandello describes n his line: “we who are dead and you who are living, coexist, Nino, on other frequencies, other vibrations, you will notice it and will be amazed.”
It is a deeply poetic stage iof my director’s career in which the scene becomes a space of a soul more than a representation, also supported by my training in scenography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, which leads me to think of space as of a living matter of thought and emotion.
Why is Pirandello still relevant today?
Because he knew how to portray the human being in his continuous inner fracture, and this fracture today is even more evident. We live immersed in increasingly “virtual” realities and in images of ourselves that are often constructed, where it is difficult to abandon the masks imposed by the social gaze. But the mask is fiction, representation: and precisely for this reason it becomes even more urgent to try recognizing and overcoming it. Today more than ever we need to “throw away” these masks and reconnect with the authenticity of existence, with a true and deep contact with what we are. Pirandello reminds us that we are never one, but many, andt between what we are and what we appear to be there exists an unstable space in it’s constant transformation. That is why Pirandello is not only relevant, but also universal: because he does not speak of an era, but of the very condition of our being human.
What are the most successful aspects of the show based on Proietti’s play?
I suppose they are the overall harmony, the aesthetic approach, and the constant dialogue between its parts: sets, costumes, lights, atmosphere, and music intertwine into a single language, sustained by a precise and coherent vision. At the center is the idea of non-linearity and the relativity of time, rendered through a suspended, dreamlike scene, in which space and time expand even in the movements on stage, between slowdowns and sudden emotional accelerations. It is a continuous passage between the contemplative slowness of poetic thought and the more agitated and dramatic force of action: a sort of unstable balance, a living scale of opposing forces that seek and respond to each other.
Your next direction will be…?
I have four projects in mind that I hope can become my next directions: “A Saint with a Broom” by Luigi Magni, “Macbeth” by William Shakespeare, and “The Lord of a Massacre” by Yasmina Reza, as well as “The Trip of Christ” by Claudio Proietti. They are very different plays,[ but all crossed by the same interest in human fragilities and in the invisible tensions that bind characters to their deepest truths.
Where will the show dedicated to Pirandello be staged after May 26th, the day of its debut?
After the debut on May 26th, we hope to take this show on tour throughout Italy, starting from Sicily: Agrigento, Trapani, Marsala, and Palermo. We are also working on some dates in Apulia, then Naples and Rome, with the idea of gradually moving up through the country. At the same time, some possible stops abroad are also being defined, in particular in Tunisia and the United States. These are projects we are working on carefully and that we hope can materialize.
We thank Anna Graziano for the interview and invite our readers to see the show
“Pirandello and a young author” on stage at the Nunicipal theater of San Vito Lo Capo, Sicily, on May 26th.
Olga Matsyna
