Almost ten years after "Six Characters in Search of an Author," Pirandello writes "Tonight We Improvise" (1929), which operates on the same level as the most famous of the Sicilian playwright's works: the relationship between Art and Life.

In "Six Characters," the heroes, left halfway by the author, seek to live, to complete their lives on stage. Thus, Pirandello suggests the power of the artistic creation, which, once it takes shape, escapes the control of its creator and acquires its own, autonomous life.

A similar phenomenon, but from the opposite side of the mirror, occurs in "Tonight We Improvise." Here, a troupe, led by its director, attempts to "construct" a dramatic play, starting from a short story (by Pirandello himself, of course). The director wants to subjugate the story, the characters, and the actors to his own views on theater, into shapes and formulas, into the effects of well-organized theatricality. But the actors "embody" their roles so much, the roles "enter" so deeply into the actors, that they, frustrated with the director's recipes, expel him from the theater and remain alone to live the parts they are portraying. They are no longer actor A, caricaturist B, role player C - they are the characters of the story, a Story of Jealousy, "the most terrible jealousy that exists, the jealousy for the Past," which overwhelms a man for his wife and drives him mad with the thought that she may be dreaming of her joyous youth.