Writing Pinocchio

Carlo Collodi’s Adventures of Pinocchio was originally serialised in a children’s comic in the 1880s.  It seems Collodi wasn’t impressed by the behaviour of children at this time and after the first 15 instalments Pinocchio had made some terrible decisions, behaved very badly and ended up abandoned, penniless and left for dead. Although Collodi was happy with this ending, his readers weren't. And the many letters children wrote to the magazine eventually forced him to pick up the story again and move it towards a happier ending.

This conflict between what the author felt about Pinocchio and what his readers felt was reflected in the two SAVVY groups I was part of when I started the writing process: the Southleigh Community and MIND.

Both groups were reading a chapter each week, then exploring the themes and story through drama, and it soon became clear that people disagreed as to whether Pinocchio was an innocent, misunderstood child who needed support and guidance, or just a very selfish puppet who never learnt anything from his mistakes.

This argument developed into the narrators of the play. On the one hand we have Collodi himself, who we meet just after he’s killed Pinocchio off in Episode 15, while the views of his young readers are represented by his Editor, Alex, and their childlike assistant, Potpan.

Because the story was written episodically, by an author who wasn’t always sympathetic to his hero, the story didn't always flow logically, there was very little character development and events tended to just happen one after another. Even the happy ending requested by the children depended on the judgement and magic of the Blue Fairy. Pinocchio had no agency in his own story and that didn’t feel like a helpful story to tell in 2023.

Through improvisation with MIND and Southleigh some of the other characters in the story began to come to life, which led to Pinocchio starting to develop meaningful relationships in the script. This in turn allowed Pinocchio to use the lessons he learned in each adventure to help his friends and family – his bad decisions started to look less like the work of a selfish puppet and more like part of growing up.

In the end it felt quite wrong for this version of Pinocchio to learn so much about life and still want to be just like everyone else. Most of the real children he had met along the way had been unkind and the one real boy he had truly loved had lived a hard life and met a sad end. Why would Pinocchio want to be “real” when he had learned to love and accept himself just as he is? And of course, having reached love and acceptance, he found himself perfectly equipped to step back into the world and carry on fighting injustice.

Not for him the passive happy ending, not for him the quiet satisfied life.

Armed with love, kindness and understanding he sets off on a new adventure.

Keep fighting, Pinocchio my friend, keep fighting.  

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John Handscombe, playwright