Six Characters in Search of an Author

A play rehearsal is interrupted by the arrival of a divided family who have been abandoned by their creator and are seeking an author, ‘any author’, to give them a ‘definitive artistic form’ so their stories may be staged. While the first performance of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author to a Rome audience in May 1921 was almost booed off the stage it has gone on to have many successful seasons and is still a major part of the theatrical repertoire. The play, in part, is Pirandello’s attack on the Italian theatre of the time, with its actor-managers and star-systems, its stock characterisations, and its standard repertoire of romantic melodramas. However, it is a play on many levels. It raises questions about the nature of reality, of what constitutes identity, and how we can gauge what is truth. On another level it is a hysterical romantic melodrama about a warring family who live out their emotions on the skin. And, it is also a deeply tragic revenge narrative – a tale of betrayal, adultery, suicide and death. Students enrolled in theatre studies at UWA present this very physical, at times comedic, and often provocatively philosophical play, virtually uncut and unlike many productions we choose not to attempt to modernise it into the contemporary world of electronic media.