Pirandello: A Theatrical Philosopher

Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, is a unique and passionate play in which the dynamics of the theater are uprooted, deconstructed, and questioned for their validity and integrity. In Pirandello’s play, we experience the art of “metatheater.” Pirandello utilizes this technique to demonstrate the disadvantages of theatrical editing, enlighten his audience with self-reflecting philosophical questions, and acknowledge the timelessness of art.
To begin with, the Characters express their frustration with Producer when he begins to rewrite and change their stories to suit the theater’s requirements. Pirandello centers on this subject in Act II of the play. It begins with Producer addressing Prompter, “…try to get the lines down…at least the most important ones”(Pirandello 1268). Pirandello is showing the difficulty producers and directors have in adhering to the original script during artistic translation. Producer’s method disheartens Father and they have the following argument:
PRODUCER. You’ll need to give her a new name.
FATHER. Amalia.
PRODUCER. But that’s the real name of your wife, isn’t it? We can’t use her real name.
FATHER. I am already starting to…how can I explain it…to sound false, my own words sound like someone else’s. (Pirandello 1268-69)
They continue to argue.

FATHER. Don’t we even have our own meaning?
PRODUCER. Not a bit of it! Whatever your meaning is only material here…
(Pirandello 1269)
To a large extent, the transfer of art from paper to stage is at the mercy of the actors, director and producer. Their judgment will determine what is left out and how authentic the interpretation will be for the audience. Pirandello’s Producer argues that his Actors will give form, voice,...

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...s implying that we live an illusion and believe it is our reality; therefore we unconsciously disengage from our own reality. This profound thought challenges our concept of reality just as the Characters, in the play’s final scene, challenge the Actors and Producer’s concept of what is really happening in their playhouse. At the end of Pirandello’s masterpiece, the audience member who embarked upon this play in an attempt to escape their own lives are systematically made aware that they, like the Characters, can never truly escape their true realities.

Works Cited

Pirandello, Luigi. Six Characters in Search of an Author. The Norton Anthology of World
Literature. Ed. Martin Puchner. Shorter Third Edition. Vol. 2. Norton: New
York, 2013.1250-1290. Print.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "Ozymandias." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web.
18 Feb. 2014