Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello

The most recent play that I have read is Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello. I found this play extremely interesting and it brought up some very good views about theatre and what theatre is.

The play is about a group of actors rehearsing and being interrupted by this group of Characters with a complex story and fixed expressions. They are in essence the spirit of stories and written down words. These characters are looking for somewhere to show their story to an audience. The conflict that eventually pops up is between the Characters and the Actors. The actors want to perform the Characters play but since the Actors are not the characters and will technically never be the characters, the Characters do not think the actors are going to be able to do it.

The play brings up a very interesting point about the the idea of theatre and the idea of acting. It portrays the fact that characters in plays are real and that they are possibly even more "real" then the actors playing them since they are unchanging and have fixed stories. It also brings about the question of how much can actors really become the characters. As good as actors may be, they can never fully be the character since they are not them. The idea of the directors vision versus the writers vision is also a big theme. When the Actors were setting up the play, the Characters would laugh because the setting did not look like what it was supposed to look like. The fact that the Characters were real was reinforced with the way Characters said that their stories were real and that it had to be portrayed right. Really shows that the writer had a vision before something ever goes onstage or screen and that it should be considered when directing.

In other news, right now Midsummer is going great. We open two weeks from friday and its so crazy but I am so excited. I will also be performing my monologue and scene with Hannah tomorrow a final time and will update this blog with how that went.