DILEMMAS OF THEATRICAL MODERNITY

RECEPTION OF LUIGI PIRANDELLO IN BRAZIL DURING THE 1920S.

Abstract

The ample intellectual, literary and theatrical work developed by the writer Luigi Pirandello in Italy has enormous recognition of public and criticism. This author had his name not only related to important moments and historical and ideological aspects of his country, but also received in 1936 Nobel Prize for Literature and became recognized as promoter of modern Italian theater in the early twentieth century. His propositions were much discussed in Brazil in the early 1920s, and this occurred in a number of ways. In addition to the theater companies that staged plays in Pirandello, especially in São Paulo, early in the 20th century, many Brazilian artists and intellectuals took the work of the playwright as a reference. Against this, this article intends to specifically discuss the retelling that the theatrical critic Antônio de Alcantara Machado does of the work of the Italian writer. In the 1920s, Alcântara Machado sought to foster a modern theater in Brazil, so he had a close eye on the European vanguards of the beginning of the century and sought to dialogue with them. In this environment, his attention to the theater of Luigi Pirandello was essential for the project of favoring theatrical modernity in Brazilian lands.