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Abstract:

The article discusses the concept of replacing a stage actor with an automaton, a puppet, a dummy, or bodiless substance in the last unfinished play by Luigi Pirandello, “I giganti della montagna” (“Giants of the Mountain”) (1931–1936). The interaction of live and mechanical actors in the magical villa Scalogna, trying to act “The Tale of a Replaced Son” reveals a conflict between them. Cotrone, who expresses the thoughts of Pirandello himself, puts artificial actors — dolls or disembodied spirits — above artists from flesh and blood. Undoubtedly, in this respect, the influence on Pirandello, on the one hand, of his personal experience as the director of the troupe, on the other, the ideals of Italian futurists, which glorified the emergence of cars and gases in the theater from 1910–1920, also in the form of “obsolete” live actors. The paper also highlights the stage incarnations that Pirandello’s puppets received in some performances of the play (Streller 1947, 1966 and 1994, Missiroli 1979, Kamenkovich and Agureeva 2014, Latini 2018).