Theatre
Six Characters in Search of an Author
Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore
Luigi Pirandello · 1925
Opening lines
Il direttore di scena
Oh! Che fai?
Oh! What are you doing?
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
A theatre company is rehearsing a play by Pirandello when six strangers burst in: the Father, the Mother, the Stepdaughter, the Son, the Boy and the Child. They are characters whom an author imagined and then abandoned along the way; they demand that the director and his actors perform the family drama they were not allowed to live through to the end. A dispute then begins, between characters and actors, over the truth of this drama and over how to represent it.
Context
The premiere, at the Teatro Valle in Rome on 9 May 1921, ended in scandal and failure; the play triumphed in Milan on the following 27 September. In 1925, the author produced a revised version, preceded by a preface that sheds light on its construction: this is the one the catalogue dates. In French, Robert Perroud translated it for Le Livre de poche, then Fabrice Melquiot at L'Arche in 2024; in English, Stephen Mulrine and Mark Musa translated it under the title “Six Characters in Search of an Author”.
Who it is for
A short play, built as a mise en abyme, which reads easily but gains its full force on the stage.
Prizes and reception
According to the editions de L'Arche, critics regard this play as “the quintessence of modern drama”.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.