Guy Tiphane
Prof. A. Davaran
EN 215
March 31, 2004

Six Characters in Search of an Author: Synopsis

This play is set in the theatre itself: the director, actors, stage manager and stage hands act as if they were rehearsing a play. For that purpose they use the theatre as they would during daytime when the auditorium is empty, extending the stage beyond its conventional limits. As the troupe readies itself to rehearse their play, the custodian comes from the auditorium with a family of six. They are characters in search of their author, the product of the author’s imagination who have not been used in a play (to illustrate their incompleteness Pirandello suggests that they wear masks). They would like the director to agree to become their author.

The director and his actors at first refuse and deride the characters, but they become interested in the story that unfolds as told by the Father and the Stepdaughter. The actors try to play a scene as described, but the characters do not agree with the interpretation and with who represents them. The characters then play the scenes so that the script can be written and so that the actors can learn it better. The Mother with her two young son and daughter is constantly haunted with fear of the scene that is about to be enacted. In the scene, her young daughter drowns in a fountain and her young boy kills himself with a handgun. The whole troupe is shocked at the realism of what they see, for it is not clear what is real and what is theatre any more.