In the years after the first World War, two plays unexpectedly achieved a clamorous success in the major capitals of Europe. This phenomenon demonstrated that an important new phase of Italian theatre was replacing the almost exclusive domination of D'Annunzio in the years past. The two plays were: Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello, staged in Paris in 1923, and The Mask and the Face by Luigi Chiarelli, staged in London in 1924.

The triumphant reception given by the Parisian spectators to Six Characters was the beginning of Pirandello's international success, and it initiated the prodigious dissemination of his work. The London production of The Mask and the Face, on the other hand, was the end of a flowering of plays that had taken place during the war and had been given the rather incorrect name of the Theatre of the Grotesque.