The Treatment of Six Characters

I have launched my first Kickstarter Campaign for this project!

I have launched my first Kickstarter campaign for this project. It’s taken me ages to put together as I did a lot of research ahead of time to understand how the Kickstarter process works, but now its up for about one week. So far the project is at just under 60% with 21 days to go.
Its been incredibly surprising finding out who does and doesn’t – so far – support my project. I have read this is a standard experience of many who stage Kickstarter projects, you are warned you learn a lot in this regard but so far I have been genuinely surprised: often some I thought would back me for sure haven’t – so far – whilst others I hardly know have been very very generous. So far I’m not sure why that is; I’m both very touched and rather bruised by all this at the same time. Of course it’s not over yet but whilst in progress it is a very steep learning curve. Also, I’ve had to email people a lot, as its part of the process, but I am aware that some people won’t like being asked and sometimes that has been difficult to gauge. I’m not comfortable with this but it is necessary. But this process has also put me back in touch with a number of people who have been very supportive even of they couldn’t afford to officially back the project.
Overall though I do think that Kickstarter is good in principle; its a completely transparent and democratic approach to funding, which is great, however as as artist you are both liberated and made vulnerable by this at the same time. Liberated because funding is not based on hidden codes or quangos but then again if you fail this is also made public too; what the process gains in accessibility and generosity it lacks discretion, for artists at least. In some ways though the real lesson is you effectively take your existing networks with you, with a chance to expand this in surprising ways. You do have to be very realistic about the fact of whether you have a strong enough network around you to sustain a campaign, however this network does not have to be just your contacts and allies within the arts. This is a good thing. it can also include, for once, simply those who know love and support you, and who’s cumulative support can then fundamentally change the success of your project. That doesn’t often happen and it is a good thing. Just toughen yourself up to have revealed who really will and will not support you. It’s both beautiful and alarming simultaneously, however in the end this is good to know.

If you are reading this do visit my Kickstarter, and if you are prepared to back me I will be eternally grateful. It’s not over yet!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sebarnet/piran…

My Kickstarter video

introduction, part 2

Intriguingly, Pirandello sustained an enduring interest in the relationship of his plays and stories to the structures of film and in fact tried thirty-nine times to get ‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’ filmed, without success. Pirandello died in 1936 from pneumonia, which he contracted while he was in the studio lots of Cinecittà attending the filming of the second film version of his most famous novel, ‘The Late Mattia Pascal’.

Tantalisingly, given that ‘The treatment of Six Characters’ has never been filmed, like Anne-Marie’s recent work ‘Meeting the Pied Piper in Brasov, a paper prologue’ it remains an absent, unmade film. Combining her interest in cinematic drawing, absent films, and self reflexive art forms whilst at the British School at Rome Anne-Marie’s version of ‘The treatment for Six Characters’ will make use of a series of drawings, which she will then place within a filmed journey that will repeat Pirandello’s final journey home from Cinecittà, where unbeknownst to him he will die a few days later.

‘‘The treatment for Six Characters’

The treatment for Six Characters was developed from Film-Novelle (scenario), a screenplay for Six characters written in 1928-30 by Pirandello with Adolf Lantz whilst Pirandello was living in Berlin. Pirandello intended to adapt ‘Six Characters…’ into entirely cinematic terms and was planned his film version would have a strong affinity with German expressionist film in its uses of chiaroscuro, phantasmagorical, shadowy images, urban street scenes, and illusory transformations of character. Pirandello was also interested in an experimental approach to sound and image, which he felt could be used heighten the possibilities of a meta film. A marked difference between The Treatment for Six Characters and earlier versions is that it makes more use of Max Reinhardt’s famous staging of the play in Vienna and Berlin, which focussed on theatre’s and films metaphysical role and the possibility of a form of Kammerspielfilm, a rubric embracing both expressionistic and melodramatic styles. The Treatment also features a long open and closing sequences that distinguishes the Author from the Six Characters and sets one film inside another.

In the 1920‘s Pirandello wrote several times about the possibilities of film as a medium, thinking in inventive ways about the relationship of images to sound, as well as reflexive use of voice and subtitle; he was opposed to the straight-forward filming of theatre or narrative, feeling that there were more radical possibilities and was in dialogue about his ideas with Jean Epstein, Sergei Eisenstein, F W. Murnau (who was to film the earlier, failed Prologo), Fritz Lang, Rene Clair, and others. Pirandello’s thinking will lend an important framework for Anne-marie’s personal translation of The Treatment for Six Characters.

Pirandello has been on Anne-Marie’s mind for twenty years. Whilst still a student at the Royal College of Art he was first mentioned to her by her then tutor, Jim Mooney, who felt that Anne-marie’s paintings, at the time, bore a relationship to the narrative tensions of Pirandello’s plays. Since then she has continued to feel the provocative blurring between drama and life, for which Pirandello is famous, helps to gauge similar tensions within her own work. She remains staunchly intrigued by the possibilities of a self-reflexive form.

Preparations for The Treatment for Six Character have already begun, while production will start in earnest from October 2012. Further developments will be posted here.

‘The Treatment for Six Characters’, (Work-in-progress)

INTRODUCTION, 1

As part of my residency at the British School at Rome, made possible by the Derek Hill Scholarship, I will be working with the resources of the British School at Rome, as well as visiting ‘Studio di Luigi Pirandello’ and ‘Cinecittà’, to make my version of a 1935 un-made film treatment by Luigi Pirandello.

This was originally planned to be a cinematic version of Pirandello’s famous meta-play ‘Six Characters in Search of a Author’. Treatment for Six Characters was developed from earlier versions for a film of Six Characters, including Prologo ,1925, and Film-Novelle (scenario), 1928-30, which were all to be influenced by German Expressionist film. Treatment for Six Characters written in 1935-6 and was specifically intended to be directed and produced by German Theatre Director Max Reinhardt, ‘the Kaiser of the Berlin Theatre’, who had already staged the play over one hundred times to huge success. Reinhardt was to develop The Treatment for Six Characters with film director Josef von Sternberg, with Pirandello himself starring in a new role of The Author. Negotiations for this ended on the advent of Pirandello’s death in 1936.