Six Characters in Search of an Author (Signet Classics)

by Luigi Pirandello

Book Overview

One of the major figures of modern theater, Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) wrote dramas and satires that sparked controversy with their radical departures from conventional theatrical techniques. His... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0451526880
• Release Date: May 1998
• Publisher: Signet
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.7" x 0.3" x 4.2"

Customer Reviews

Pirandello's classic existentialist drama and two more plays

Luigi Pirandello's 1921 play "Six Characters in Search of an Author" ("Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore") has the deserved reputation of being the first existentialist drama and having a profound effect on later playwrights, especially those practitioners of the Theater of the Absurd such as Samuel Beckett ("Waiting for Godot"), Eugene Ionesco ("Rhinoceros"), and Jean Genet ("The Maids"). Pirandello's writing often focuses on elements of madness, illusion and isolation, all of which are inspired by the tragic aspects of his personal life in which his wife went insane and his daugther tried to commit suicide. In 1921 during a five week period Pirandello wrote his two acknowledged masterpieces, "Six Characters in Search of an Author" and "Henry IV." While "Six Characters" was successful when it opened in Rome it was also considered scandalous. However, it soon being performed in Milan, London, New York, and Germany. The setting for "Six Characters in Search of an Author" is a rehearsal for a play (By Pirandello) that is interrupted by the arrival of six characters. Their leader, the father, tells the manager that they are looking for an author. It seems that the author who created them never finished their story and they are unrealized characters who have not yet been fully brought to life. The father insists that they are not real people but characters, and the manager and his cast can only laugh at the idea. But then they become intrigued by the bits and pieces of the story the six characters have to tell. The manager agrees to produce their story and become the author for whom they have been searching. He tries to stage the scene where the father meets the step-daughter in the dress shop but both characters insist that what the actors are doing is not realistic. The manager allows them to finish out the scene instead. This sets up the basic juxtaposition of "drama" and "reality" for the rest of the play, with the key scenes in the lives of these characters providing more questions than they answer about what happened and what it means. At the point when the manager can no longer tell the difference between acting and reality he becomes fed up with the entire thing and ends the rehearsal, providing an audience that has already been challenged by these changing notions of reality with an abrupt ending to the drama. There may or may not be a real story here, but the ultimate point of this play is that the tradition of reality in the theater no longer holds true. The radical idea here is that there is an immutability of reality for these six characters. Because they are forms, forced into performing the actions for which they were imagined, there is an inherent conflict with life. This is why the son wants to escape but cannot leave the studio and must play his role, as must the Mother and the rest of the characters. This is just as true of all the other characters besides the six, although the others are less inclined to see the truth, or at

Pirandello's Best

There are actors preparing for a Pirandello play, when they get interrupted but six characters. Leading the six characters, the father steps up to inform them they are looking for an author and explains that the author hasn't fully brought them to life yet. The manager tries to kick them out when he is intrigued in the story they start describing. The play starts to take its twists when the father encourages his wife to leave him for his secretary because he has gotten bored with her over the years. The mother leaves the father with the eldest son. The mother starts a new family with the man, having three children. The father starts to miss her, and seeks out the children in order to reach her. The other man eventually moves away from the city with the family and the father loses track of them. After, the other man dies the mother returns to the city with the children. She gets a job in Madame Pace's dress shop, unaware that Madame Pace is more interested in using her daughter as a prostitute. The father arrives at the dress shop and that's where it starts to get good... The sense of tragedy and disillusion showed through in his work because of his personal experiences. In 1894, at the age of 27, he married a young woman who he never met. His parents arranged the marriage, Antonietta Portulano, the daughter of his father's business partner. Antonietta's mother had died in childbirth because of her father's insane jealousy that wouldn't allow a doctor in during the birth. Antonietta suffered a mental breakdown and became so violent that she should have been institutionalized. Pirandello kept her at home for seventeen years, terrorizing him and his three children. Their daughter was so troubled by her mother's illness that she tried to commit suicide. She failed when the old revolver failed to fire. His wife's illness played a great role in his work, contributing to the theme of madness, illusion, and isolation. I highly enjoyed reading this story because of its turns and twists. It kept me intent because of it's abrupt turns. When the whole prostitution scene came in, I was caught off gaurd and it made the book so much more entertaining. Also, Pirandello's style of naturalism is creative but a little odd.. Luigi had a strange upbringing and a crazy wife, but his work is so warped and disillusioned that you find it very entertaining. To better understand the sporadic behavior of the characters and the novel itself, you need to read about Luigi Pirandello himself. I am one of those people who don't like to read a thousand-paged books-containing 30+pages in a chapter. This novel is short and sweet, but so good that I wanted to keep reading. For, the past year I haven't found to many novels that I've cared for, but I highly recommend reading this book. Preferably recommending to people that are open to new and random things, and if you have a bit of a twisted or normal sense of humor I guarantee you'll love it! I'm always open to any kind of novel an

A nearly flawless work of the theater well ahead of its time

As with Laurence Sterne's TRISTRAM SHANDY, Pirandello's 1921 masterpiece, SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR, was well ahead of its time. It confronts issues in the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, postmodernism (structuralism and deconstruction) as well as prefacing experimental theater, metatheater, and performance art. Pirandello's work is a nearly flawless play which breeches the topics of self-identity (a la Descartes), truth and illusion (before Albee), and aesthetics (questioning the legitimizing factor in Aristotle's theory of catharsis). Furthermore, it forces the audience--as too many works of art fail to do--to think without lapsing into philosophic didacticism. Highly recommended.

the beginning

Pirandelloès Six Characters in Search of an Author was written in 1921, in the shadow of World War 1 -- long before the beginning of the Absurdist movement, long before Ionesco and Beckett and Stoppard began probing the same themes Pirandello does here. While, indeed, less subtle and perhaps less artful than these playwrightès later works, it was the pilot -- the opening of the modernist door. The sheer tragedy of life, our inability to communicate our experience accurately to others which sentences us to eternal alienation, the thought that we are, indeed, all characters in search of the author of our fate, seem now commonplace. But in Pirandelloès time they were revolutionary. Itès well worth the read for this alone, although the story of the chracters is convoluted at times.

One review in search of a reviewer

He must be around here somewhere. Let me see, hello? Mr. Reviewer? Ms. Reviewer? How I am I supposed to start this? I guess I am a review for the Luigi Pirandello play, "Six Characters in Search of an Author." What am I supposed to say about it? I guess I could say that it is a wonderful piece about the search for truth. A reflection of the human experience. Dazzled and question ridden, on a journey to nowhere. But I haven't even read the thing! Mr. Reviewer? Ms. Reviewer? Tell me what it's about so I could have some idea to tell the readers out there. What? I can't hear you. Pirndello's best play? A post modern triumph? An easily stageable highway? Substitute for butter? What? I give up, you wicked person. Find someone else to be your slave, I am going to sleep now