Six Characters in Search of an Author Luigi

Six Characters in Search of an Author Luigi Pirandello Written in 1921

Luigi Pirandello (1867 – 1936) Nobel Prize winner in 1934

Plot l l l Six characters appear on a stage that is being used for the rehearsal of a Pirandello play. They ask the Stage Manager for help since they have been created and then discarded by an author. They seek another author to cast them in a play and let them play out their roles A group of actors steps forward to portray the lives that the six characters have just described, but when they do so the characters object to their re-enactment, claiming that it distorts the truth. When one of the characters commits suicide, the rest of the characters mourn his death while the actors insist nervously that it is only make believe. Which is it? And how will the situation be resolved?

Meaning of the Play and its Relationship to Cubism Whereas cubism is art about art, this play focuses on theater about theater, on the process of “how to craft” a play.

Problems to be Resolved by the Play

How is the raw material of life transformed into theater?

How are multiple perspectives (characters/actors) revealing the complexity of life incorporated into a unified whole in a theatrical production?

How is the “eternal moment” (the present) expressed in a theatrical production?

What are the roles that dramatic conventions and stagecraft play in a theatrical production?

How is complex characterization portrayed on the stage?

How are unity and a harmonious balance (composition) achieved in a theatrical production?

Theatrical Innovations introduces Pirandello's device of the "theatre within theatre" l explores various levels of illusion and reality and the distortion of truth l presents a theatrical collage, exploring the interaction between theater and life on the stage l had a great impact on later writers, particularly such practitioners of the Theatre of the Absurd as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet, as well as Jean Anouilh and Jean-Paul Sartre l