Debut: Turin, Teatro Carignano, 9 October 1961 (RaiTeche movie)
| Direction | Luigi Squarzina |
| Assistant director | Paolo Giuranna |
| Set and costume | Pier Luigi Pizzi |
| Production | Teatro Stabile di Genova |
Characters and performers
The true drama
| La Moreno, that everyone knows who he is | Paola Mannoni |
| The baron Nuti | Claudio Camaso |
The comedy on the stage
| Delia Morello | Lydia Alfonsi |
| Michele Rocca | Turi Ferro |
| The old lady Donna Livia Palegari | Karola Zopegni |
| First old friend / guest | Nico Pepe |
| Second old friend / guest | Pier Paolo Porta |
| The thin young man / guest | Giorgio De Virgiliis |
| First young bored / guest | Antonio Meschini |
| Second young bored / guest | Emilio Cappuccio |
| First young lady / guest | Carla Greco |
| Second young lady / guest | Dina Braschi |
| Doro Palegari, son of Donna Livia Palegari / guest | Mario Valdemarin |
| Diego Cinci, his young friend / guest invitato | Alberto Lionello |
| Filippo, an old waiter / guest | Vittorio Penco |
| Francesco Savio, the contradictor / guest | Arnaldo Ninchi |
| His friend Prestino / guest | Eros Pagni |
| The fencing master / guest | Arrigo Forti |
The momentary in the reduced of the theater
| The director of the theater | Gino Bardellini |
| The intelligent spectator | Paolo Giuranna |
| The woman on stages | Nuccia Stancanelli |
| Favorable spectators | Giorgio De Virgiliis Ugo Fangareggi Carla Greco Nuccia Stancanelli |
| Opponents spectators | Franco Aloisi Dina Braschi Giulio Brogi Arrigo Forti Giancarlo Fortunato Pasquale Moruzzo |
| The administrator of the Company | Luigi Carubbi |
| Critics of the drama | Franco Carli Adolfo Fenoglio Enrico Ardizzone Luigi Carubbi |
| An old failed author | Vittorio Penco |
| A writer who disdains writing | Pier Paolo Porta |
| The peaceful spectator | Nico Pepe |
| The worldly spectator | Gualtiero Isnenghi |
| What stands out | Guido Marchi |
| Other women spectators | Elvira Cortese Rita Di Lernia Fiorella Prandi Emanuela Fallini Miranda Poggi Sandra Rivadossi |
| Other spectators men | Mario Gallo Francesco Morillo Gianni Bertoncini |
| A reporter | Emilio Cappuccio |
| An usher | Luigi Dameri |
| Another usher | Nino Bellet |
| A mask | Laura De Marchi |
Squarzina fabricated a show staged only twice in Italy because of the complexity of the text and the abundance of actors (forty-three), making the most relevant, novel choices with regard to other Pirandellian productions. He goes beyond the traditional Pirandellian interpretation of the opposition between “life” and “form,” “appearance” and “substance,” “rational” and “irrational,” proposing a new way of looking at Pirandello: not a relativistic so much as a quantum view, a probabilistic view, shown by the sense of risk expressed especially by the intermissions. He thus highlights the proximity to futurists: the play as an event, but available for replication every day; the extension of scenic action to the parterre; the author’s provocative presence in the theatre: audience involvement in the acting, the Dadaist nonsense and the random writing – theatre as an instrument for magnifying contradictions.
But the director is fully aware that Pirandello cannot be ascribed to the Futurist avant-garde, even though he flirts with it; he believes one can speak of Mannerism, which he includes in the show with reference to Pirandellian self-mockery.
In terms of performance, Squarzina accurately duplicated the production of Ciascuno a suo modo’s opening night staged at Milan’s Teatro Filodrammatici on 23 May 1924, using sets and costumes from the 1920s; to effectively visualise audience participation, he invented a revolving platform rotating with the movement of the audience, which then at some point merged on the stage.
The production was a triumph with audiences and critics alike; Squarzina received the Premio San Genesio for his directing work, while Genoa’s Teatro Stabile of Genova was honoured with the Premio internazionale Pirandello for best Pirandellian production.
The director would subsequently accompany the production with his essay "Pirandello e la maniera: Ciascuno a suo modo e il teatro totale delle avanguardie” [“Pirandello and la maniera: ‘Each in his own way’ and the total theatre of the avant-gardes”], constituting a mature conceptual elaboration; later on, in 1983-84, he would dedicate a single-theme course at DAMS in Bologna to Pirandelli’s text.
The Rai news service
We would like to thank teatro Nazionale - Teatro Stabile di Torino and Teatro Nazionale di Genova for the use of photographic material.