Carmelo Rifici directs Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello, a production resulting from a collaboration with the Croatian National Theatre in Rijeka and its Italian Drama Company, to mark the 80th anniversary of its foundation. The first play in the ‘theatre within a theatre’ trilogy, it is considered the Sicilian playwright’s most famous masterpiece, presented here in an adaptation by Fabrizio Sinisi.

Rijeka is a city with a complex history, marked by deep political, cultural and identity-related divisions. A border town and a contested city, it has experienced occupations, processes of forced Italianisation, the wounds of war, exodus and, later, the consequences of the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia. Here, languages, cultures and identities have continued to engage, clash and coexist.
In this context, the Rijeka Theatre has preserved this complexity over the years, maintaining a fragile yet necessary dialogue between Italian and Croatian culture, transforming the stage into a space for cultural exchange and survival.
“What would happen if Pirandello’s six characters spoke in Croatian and asked an Italian theatre company to listen to their story? It is from this question that the play arises,” explains Rifici. On stage, a company from the Dramma Italiano is busy celebrating its anniversary by staging Pirandello. But the director feels the need to go further: theatre cannot limit itself to preserving the past; it must challenge it; it must open the windows and let in a European, contemporary, restless air. Pirandello must speak to the present day, stepping out of his own monumentality.”