Teatro di Roma's director Luca Ronconi officially announced Apr. 23 the international tour of his new mounting of Luigi Pirandello's Questa sera si recita a soggetto (Tonight We Improvise). The show, which is currently rehearsing in Rome, will premiere at Lisbon's Teatro National "Dona Maria II" May 7 and run until May 9, within the festival that is preceding the opening May 22, of Lisbon's "Expo 98".

The play will then move to Barcelona's "Mercat de les Flors" (May 14-17) and to Vienna's Ronacher Theatre (May 23-28), within the "Wiener Festwochen", but will not be seen in Italy until next December, when it is planned to open Rome's Teatro Argentina 1998-99 season.

Luca Ronconi, who was recently awarded in Taormina with the 120,000 Ecu (130,000 US dollars) "Premio Europa per il Teatro", directs Pirandello for the second time in his career, after his 1994 acclaimed mounting of I giganti della montagna (The Mountain Giants) in Salzburg. "I chose Pirandello," said Ronconi, "because I was preparing a show that had to be performed abroad, and I needed a plot with a very strong emphasis on the meaning of the theatre itself."

Leading a cast of 22 are Massimo Popolizio, Giovanni Vinchi, Massimo De Francovich, Paola Bacci and Elisabetta Pozzi. The show features sets by Marco Capuana, costumes by Vera Marzot, lighting by Sergio Rossi and sound by Hubert Westkemper.

Questa sera si recita a soggetto was performed for the first time in 1930 in Germany, at Koenisberg' Neues Schauspielhaus. The play is the third part of Pirandello's so-called "theatre within the theatre" trilogy, in which the Nobel Prize laureate explored the relationship between appearance and reality, life and the theatre, private accommodations and social role-playing. The other two plays in the trilogy are the world famous Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore (Six Characters in Search of an Author) and Ciascuno a suo modo (Each in His Own Way). The entire trilogy was revived in Italy between 1987 and 1990 in a successful mounting directed by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi for Trieste's Teatro Stabile del Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Further information on the international tour of Questa sera si recita a soggetto is available by visiting the Teatro di Roma website, or calling the theatre at +39 6 68.40.00.11.

--By Stefano Curti
Italy Correspondent