Synopsis: For his first live performance, celebrated Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli presented Right You Are (If You Think You Are), the renowned play by Italian Nobel Laureate Luigi Pirandello. Conceived by its author as a parable on the impossibility of objective truth, Pirandello's play (titled Cosi' e [se vi pare] in the original Italian) was transformed by Vezzoli into a stirring meditation on our culture's obsession with fame and the private world of the film star. The play orients itself around the elusive character of Mrs. Ponza, a woman who exists apparently only through the eyes of others. Constructed as a series of conversations among a group of provincial Italians, the play turns on their dissection of Mrs. Ponza and her family, skewering the social forces of gossip in the process. The boundaries between illusion and reality, surface and depth become inextricably obscured as the group becomes increasingly frenzied in their attempt to discover the true identity of their absent subject. Vezzoli examines the fundamental ambiguity of truth, the seductive powers of language, and the instability of the human persona.

Cast:
Cate Blanchett .... Mrs. Ponza
Ellen Burstyn .... Unknown
Natalie Portman .... Unknown
Peter Sarsgaard .... Unknown
David Strathairn .... Unknown
Elaine Stritch .... Unknown
Dianne Wiest .... Unknown

Notes:
• This was a one-night-only restaging of this play.

Related Links:
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (off site)