Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23086 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-28
• Original language: Italian
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

Customer Reviews

A pioneering piece of drama
This play provoked outrage among theatre-goers at its first ever performance: not only did it defy dramatic conventions by confusing reality with fiction, but it also made the audience assess their lives anew with a harsh examination of human personalities and motivations. Fictional characters are contrasted with human beings (represented on stage by the 'actors' in the play). In art a character is stable, unable to break out of the mould fashioned by its creator; we however are continually changeable creatures who between one day and the next transform ourselves to such an extent that we have no solid 'character' at all. This is the essence of Six Characters in Search of an Author: the difficulty, even impossibility of human communication when, like Heraclitus' river, we are never the same at any two given moments. Like most of Pirandello's work, the most obvious 'plot' is tangential. The real issues are philosophical, and this wonderfully crafted piece of work is at once harrowing and stimulating.

What if?
Luigi Pirandello kicked theatre convention out the door with "Six Characters in Search of an Author." Illusion and reality get a bit bent out of shape, as fictional characters stroll about and converse with managers and actors. It's a brilliant piece of existentialist work, and one that had a distinct effect on theatre after that.

It opens with several unnamed theatre people -- the Manager, the Leading Man, the Prompter -- rehearsing a play in an empty theatre. "During this manoeuvre, the Six CHARACTERS enter, and stop by the door at back of stage," Pirandello tells us: a florid Father, timid Mother, equally timid Boy, arrogant Son, sexy Step-Daughter and too-young-to-have-much-personality Child.

"As a matter of fact . . . we have come here in search of an author . . ." the Father tells the manager. The characters have been abandoned by their author, who "no longer wished, or was no longer able" to put them into a story. And now they want the theatre company to provide them with a vehicle that will make them immortal -- and they have to convince the Manager that they are worthy.

Pirandello dispels the unreality of the play with "Oh sir, you know well that life is full of infinite absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true." While the events of this play seems to be sort of gimmicky, Pirandello uses them with unusual grace (and not a few moments of bizarre comedy).

The characterizations are among the weirdest I've ever seen -- we have an entire family drama going on without a play/novel/film for it. Lovers, illegitimate kids, sibling rivalry and marital fights. Ironically, the Character family overshadows the "real" people on the stage. The Manager is a fun character, though, perpetually impatient and overstressed. "Pretence? Reality? To hell with it all!" the Manager cries near the end of the play.

But Pirandello's odd existentialist play "Six Characters in Search of an Author" is both pretense and reality, and it's a fun and enlightening ride while it lasts.