Margherita Peluso recently sat down with MovieMeter to discuss her new documentary focusing on the life and career of Marta Abba, the muse of legendary Italian screenwriter and playwright Luigi Pirandello.
A celebrated theatre actress not only in her home country of Italy but also in the United States and Australia, Peluso is a veteran of the acting game on stage and became almost instantly infatuated with Abba as soon as she heard of her complicated relationship with Pirandello, who is responsible for some of the most famous and acclaimed plays in the history of Italian performance art.
Notable works of Pirandello include The Late Mattia Pascal (1904) Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) Henry IV (1922) and One, No One and One Hundred Thousand (1926).
In 1925, Pirandello met and started an association with Abba, who would become the great inspiration for his subsequent work. As Pirandello was 58 and married at the time, and Abba was 25, it is not believed that any relationship was consummated between the pair, but they remained close until his death in 1936.
Peluso's life is intrinsically linked to that of Pirandello and Abba. Like Pirandello, she grew up in Sicily, while like Abba, she was born in Milan.
Abba and Peluso also bravely left Italy to pursue their career dreams and ended up in the bright lights of Broadway.
When asked by Moviemeter what led her to create and produce the upcoming documentary on Abba's life, Peluso responded:
"Luigi Pirandello was a very particular character, a very particular writer. His plays have a psychological aspect. You have to go across to your darker side in order to understand Pirandello. Pirandello was writing based on the characters he was surrounded by, in what we all assumed was Sicily.
"I came across him because I did so many plays written by him. His female characters are victims of their own identity, but strong. They have to find themselves. They were betrayed by themselves, they were betrayed by others. They were struggling with life and with their own identity.
"And then I discovered his muse, Marta Abba. She was a big actress and a big participant in his life. The way she was acting, talking and being was very inspiring for Pirandello. The characters he wrote over the past 20 years were inspired by Marta Abba. She had an aura.
"She was never recognised in Italy. She was fighting a lot in order to work and just be a woman. Be independent. People were just trying to push her down, to hide her, to judge her, without recognising her. This is a big mystery. Probably because she was a very strong woman, a very strong character.
"She was in big plays as a main character and maybe people couldn't accept this because she was young. This was why she decided to go to America.
"I was very impressed by this woman and how my life is very similar to her life. I moved overseas - there were more opportunities, more appreciation."
Margherita Peluso cinema showreel
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