# ADSactly Literature: Benchmark Theater - Six Characters in Search of an Author

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>  The mystery of artistic creation is the same as that of birth. 

Hello @adsactly readers,

Today, we return to another installment in our Benchmark Theater series, which focuses on plays (from the 20th century mostly, but not necessarily) that have been pivotal in the development of theater in the past hundred years.
In the past, we’ve spoken about important authors such as Eugene O’Neill, Sam Shepard, Tom Stoppard, Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco, just to name a few. And now, we turn our attention to Italian dramatist Luigi Pirandello and his play, ‘Six Characters In Search of an Author’ (Sei Personaggi In Cerca D’autore, in original). According to his description on Wikipedia,
> He was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his almost magical power to turn psychological analysis into good theatre."

So that should tell you a little about what kind of writer he was. First, let’s talk a little about the play, get a feel of the action, which is as follows.
A troupe of actors are rehearsing a play by Pirandello when a bunch of strangers show up and interrupt them. They claim they are characters from an unfinished play. Their author abandoned them, as The Father explains, and so, they are unfinished characters, looking for an author to finish their story.

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At first, the manager of the theater protests and tells them to leave, but slowly, they all become caught up in the characters’ story. The six characters are The Father, The Mother, The Son, The Stepdaughter, The Boy and The Child. The Father is an intellectual who married a peasant woman, The Mother. They were happy, at first, they had The Son, but slowly their happiness begins to fade and The Mother becomes enamored with his secretary, an affair which the Father encourages, since he’s grown tired of her. Eventually, the Mother leaves him and the Son behind and goes off with the other man and has another family by him, The Stepdaughter, The Boy and The Child.
As time goes by, The Father begins to miss her and longs to be part of her new family. It’s revealed he even used to wait outside the Stepdaughter’s school and give her presents. Naturally, The Son is embittered at being abandoned.

Eventually, the other man dies and the Mother begins work for a Madame Pace, who runs a dress shop and a prostitution business and eventually employs the Stepdaughter in the latter. One night, The Father visits the shop and Madam Pace sets him up with the Stepdaughter. The Mother runs in, screaming, and he invites them all to move in with him, ashamed of what he almost did. This causes the Son to resent them all even more.

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The manager of the theater agrees to be their author and asks his actors to play out the scene between the Father and the Stepdaughter, but they’re interrupted by the real Father and Stepdaughter, who complain their acting in not realistic.
The manager changes the setting of the scene, placing them in a garden and then watches, as the Child drowns in a fountain, the Boy shoots himself with a revolver and the Stepdaughter runs out of the theater in distress. The play ends with the manager calling for the end of the rehearsal, unsure whether what he’s just witnessed is real or not.

‘Six Characters In Search of an Author’ is a very surreal play and it reminds one of Tom Stoppard’s ‘Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead’, where the characters are also confused about the distinction between make-believe and reality and frequently argue with a group of actors over whether or not their play is realistic.

>  What for you is an illusion, to be created, is for us our unique reality. 

This is the main theme in Pirandello’s play. In theory, the six characters are not real, being just a figment of the author’s imagination. And yet, since the manager and the actors can see them, flesh and blood, that makes them real and lends credibility to their existence.
Pirandello argues that reality is a subjective matter – what one man perceives as real, another might see as just an illusion and vice-versa.

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The argument is mainly carried out between the manager – the voice of “reality” - and the Father – the voice of illusion – who points out that people have many “possibilities of being” depending on who is observing them. When the actors try to reenact their story, he protests that the Leading Man is an illusion of him, what the Leading Man perceives him to be, rather than the Father himself.
The line between reality and fiction becomes even more blurred at the end of the play, when the characters and actors are unable to decide whether what they’ve just witnessed is real or not.

Another interesting question that the play raises is what is more real, life or art? The characters and the actors seem to be in a constant competition, with the characters frequently pointing out that they are more real than the actors, because the actors borrow emotions and emulate and pretend to be someone they’re not and feel things they don’t feel, whereas the characters themselves are those people feeling those emotions.
The characters vehemently resist being referred to as such and the implication that they are not real. Because, they argue, they feel real, so then, how can they be fictitious?
It’s a comment on the absurdity of the theater itself, a venue of made-up realities, and a debate over whether the reality inside the author’s head is any less real than the reality we perceive.

>  Each of us has, inside him, a world of things. 

Pirandello also asks the question – what do characters owe their authors?
In the play, the characters are fully-formed entities, obviously independent of the author, who has abandoned them. They all lead separate lives that exist outside of the author’s imagination, like children are independent from their parents.

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And yet, they are tied to their anonymous author, constantly tormented over his abandoning them. They remain tied to him, and yet, independent at the same time. Exactly like a parent-child relationship.
It’s fascinating to note the change in the attitude of the manager of the theater and the actors, who initially doubt the characters’ story and later on, their reality, and then end up viewing them as almost sacred beings. The actors and often in awe of the Stepdaughter’s strong emotions.
Pirandello’s message with this play seems to be that the characters do not depend on their author, but the author depends on the characters. As the Father points out, authors can only be successful if they are true to their characters and write the story according to their wishes, rather than worrying what the audience/readers might think.

>  The man will die, the writer, the instrument of creation; the creature will never die! 

Apparently, when the play premiered, it left the audience reeling and confused, calling it madness – just as the actors and the manager are left confused over what they’ve just witnessed and how much is real and how much is not.
To my knowledge, there is no movie based on ‘Six Characters in Search of An Author’, but I highly encourage you to go see it at the theater, if you can, as it’s a wonderful ride.

## What are your thoughts on ‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’?

#### Authored by @honeydue
*References [1](https://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides9/SixCharacters.html#Themes) [2](https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Six-Characters-in-Search-of-an-Author/quotes/) [3](https://www.gradesaver.com/six-characters-in-search-of-an-author) [4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Pirandello)*

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