Teatrul Național ”Lucian Blaga” din Cluj-Napoca masterfully adapts Luigi Pirandello’s short stories La Carriola (The Wheelbarrow) and Soffio (A Breath) in 'The Black Mirror'.
"Luigi Pirandello makes us stand in front of a mirror which shows a painful yet necessary picture. But who is really standing in front of the mirror? Could it be our "personality"? The same character who lives with us day after day and in whom we want to recognise ourselves, only so that we could be accepted by the others? Or is it our "essence"? That unique being, the originary white page that everybody has been writing on quite frantically throughout our lives, writing whatever they wanted us to become.
This is the secret drama that we all carry and on which we get to reflect in The Black Mirror. Each of the two stories has good dramatic potential: due to the dynamic and deeply dramatic rhythm of the text; due to the physical space which Pirandello manages to create, from time to time, around his protagonists, while also guiding the spectators and, in our case, the actors; due to the surprising plot twists which enrich the stories, making them truly suspenseful.
The Turn: by confessing an "unconscionable" passion, the famed and esteemed lawyer reveals the misery of the human condition, in a tragicomic crescendo.
A Breath: in Pirandello's most magical and metaphysical short story, the protagonist touches the thumb and the index finger on his right hand and, blowing air through the gap, obtains the power to kill. The epidemic which is unleashed by this destructive power, in which man ends up annihilating himself, is our one true moral dilemma.
So, in the darkness of our mirror, we are searching for a hidden reflection, which might tell us more about what and who we are. So that we might at least remember." Roberto Bacci
