Tonight We Improvise
| Tonight We Improvise | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Luigi Pirandello |
| Characters | Doctor Hinkfuss Lead Actress/Mommina Lead Actor/Rico Verri Character Actress/Signora Ignazia Old Comic Actor/Signor Palmiro |
| Date premiered | January 25, 1930 |
| Place premiered | Königsberg |
| Original language | Italian |
| Series | Six Characters in Search of an Author, Each In His Own Way |
| Genre | Tragicomedy |
| Setting | A theatre Contemporary Sicily |
Tonight We Improvise (Italian: Questa sera si recita a soggetto [ˈkwesta ˈseːra si ˈrɛːtʃitaː sodˈdʒɛtto]) is a play by Luigi Pirandello. Like his play Six Characters in Search of an Author, it forms part of his "trilogy of the theatre in the theatre." It premiered in 1930 in a German translation in Königsberg, and had its first Italian performance in Turin on April 14, 1930.
It has been translated into English by Samuel Putnam (1932), Marta Abba (1959), and J. Douglas Campbell and Leonard Sbrocchi (1987).
A company of actors under the direction of Doctor Hinkfuss is to present an improvisation on Pirandello's novella Leonora, Addio! Hinkfuss explains that his plan for having the actors improvise, as the spirit moves them, is an attempt to allow the work to stage itself, with characters rather than actors. However, his actors are frustrated at the conflict inherent in Hinkfuss's instructions: to completely become their characters, but also to come when they are called and adapt themselves to Hinkfuss's decisions about what should happen when.
After some argument between the actors and Hinkfuss, the play begins. It concerns the La Croce family – Signor Palmiro, a sulfur mine engineer, his forceful wife Signora Ignazia, and their four daughters, Mommina, Totina, Dorina, and Nenè – who have moved from Naples to the more socially conservative Sicily. The family is popular with a local company of air force officers, who love the mother and flirt with the daughters; however, this behavior earns the family the disapproval of the rest of the town, as well as of Rico Verri, one of the other officers.
One night, Signor Palmiro is brought home bleeding by a cabaret singer whom he loves, after having been stabbed defending her honor, and dies. This having coincided with a fight among the actors as to how much they should keep to the script, the Old Comic Actor's entrance is ruined, and the actors, angry at Hinkfuss's meddling, throw him out of the theatre.
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