Six Characters in Search of an Author

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Six Characters in Search of an Author

• Luigi Pirandello
• Written in 1921

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

• 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?

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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.

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Problems to be Resolved by the Play
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How is the raw material of life transformed into
theater?
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How are multiple perspectives
(characters/actors) revealing the complexity of
life incorporated into a unified whole in a
theatrical production?
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How is the eternal moment (the present)
expressed in a theatrical production?
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What are the roles that dramatic conventions and
stagecraft play in a theatrical production?

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How is complex characterization portrayed
on the stage?
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How are unity and a harmonious balance
(composition) achieved in a theatrical production?
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Theatrical Innovations

• introduces Pirandello's device of the "theatre
  within the theatre"
• explores various levels of illusion and reality
  and the distortion of truth
• presents a theatrical collage, exploring the
  interaction between theater and life on the stage
  
• 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