Six Characters in Search of an Author

By Luigi Pirandello, translated by Carl R. Mueller

Perhaps the best known of Pirandello’s works, Six Characters gives audiences a glimpse of a play rehearsal that takes a sudden dip into the surreal with the appearance of six strange figures. It quickly becomes clear to the bewildered director and his actors that these men, women and children are in fact characters abandoned by their author, seeking help in telling the story they were designed to tell. Alternately amusing and eerie, the piece pokes fun at the inherent artificiality of the stage as well as examining the responsibilities of creativity and the nature of reality.