Six Characters in Search of an Author

The times

Written in 1921 – i.e. a war text

In a 1934 interview Pirandello declared that his was "a war theater," that "the war [World War I] had revealed the theater" to him: "When passions were let loose, I had my characters suffer those passions onstage." (Scribner’s online)

Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: as you tried to measure something, it moved away.

Eienstein’s theory of relativity: even time is relative.

Background on Play

Commedia Dell’arte: Improvised comedy with a long pedigree. Usually consisted of stock characters and often involved players wearing masks. A later version of Six specifies that the characters wear masks

First

How many plays are there here? Let’s break them down. (at least two – if not three counting the play itself)

Let’s break down the different plots

1. The “character’s” play

Why did the Father send the Mother away?

· What happened to the Mother during her "exile?"

· When did the Father see his step-daughter?

· Why did the Mother and her children return to the Father?

2. the “actor’s” play

· (what play are they staging?) Ironic? How

· How does the manager feel about Pirandello? How can you tell?

3. Six Characters in Search of an Author

How are the actors hampered by tradition? (2187)

How is the manager hampered by tradition? (2189)

What does Pirandello attempt to show by this?

After group work

· Reality TV – is it real? How does Reality TV connect to the play?

· On art v. reality: when you hold up a picture of yourself – which do you think is the “real” you? How about when you listen to yourself on the answering machine?

· Who is “real” in the play – the family or the actors? Who “dies” at the end?

· One more note: Pirandello developed a particular theory of comedy, articulated in L'umorismo (On Humor), a book-length essay he published in 1908, which connected laughter with deepfelt emotion. What he valued was the kind of humor of the sad faced clown which is laughter tinged with, at times, melancholy, and always, with feeling. Pirandello uses the example of a old woman who dresses as a young woman – complete with heavy make up and trendy clothes (think Tammy Faye Baker in clothes by Tommy) – described as "‘an old lady, her hair dyed, all sticky with some vile ointment, clumsily made-up and adorned in youthful finery." At first sight she induces scornful laughter, but when it becomes known why she is so inappropriately decked out—perhaps it is to hold the love of a much younger husband—the laughter gives way to a different feeling. This "feeling of the opposite" (sentimento del contrario), of why a thing is incongruous and therefore liable to elicit derision, which follows upon the "recognition of the opposite" (avvertimento del contrario), awareness of the fact that something is incongruous, is the spring of humorism.” (Scribner online)

How is this play “humorous” – according to Pirandello?

5. How does the Father conjure Madame Pace?

· How does Madame Pace fit into the structure of the play?

· Is Madame Pace a "real" character?

· Why isn’t the play titled "Seven Characters in Search of an Author?"

2. What is the effect of having the company rehearsing a fictional Pirandello play named The Game As He Played It?

3. The Characters' story is a play within a play. What is the relationship between their story and the story of the company's rehearsal? What is the central action of Six Characters? The Characters' story? The attempt to make a play of their story? The debate between the Father and the Producer?

8. Is the Boy dead at the end of the play. What does it mean for a "character" to be dead?

9. Explore the basic equation of life and the theater in Six Characters in Search of an Author. How is life like the theater? How is it unlike it?

One critic, contrasting realism with modernism, argues that “realism seeks to create the illusion of reality; Pirandello is bent on making illusion a compelling reality” (http://web.missouri.edu/~engbob/courses/370/sessions/20.html). Is this true? Why or why not?

Are the characters more real than the actors?

1. Why is the father so upset with the word “illusions” (2192)? Note the difference in the Manager’s and the Father’s wording:

2. How can a character be “somebody” and a “man” be “nobody” (2194)?

3. Which would Pirandello would say is superior, art or life? Prove your point. Do you agree with him? Why or why not?

4. In the preface to Six Pirandello writes that human anguish is based on "the deception of mutual understanding founded on the empty abstraction of words, the multiple personality of everyone corresponding to the possibility of being to be found in each of us, and finally the inherent tragic conflict between life, which is continually moving, and form, which fixes it, immutable" (qtd. in Scriber’s). Whew! What’s this got to do with the play? But on second thought (okay, okay, maybe third or fourth thought), this does connect with the play – your job is to determine how (hint – focus on “words”).

...the assumption that "I am I" and that "You are You" is one of the most fundamental which we make--because it seems self-evident to us, not only that the realities exist but also that they persist, so that the "I" of today and the "I " of yesterday are in some way continuous no matter what developments may occur. Upon this assumption all moral systems must rest, since obviously no one can be good or bad, guilty or innocent, unless he exists as some sort of continuous unity. (Krutch 78)