Six Characters in Search of an Author (NHB Drama Classics) Paperback – 1 Nov. 2002

Luigi Pirandello's 1921 masterpiece was a pioneering piece of post-modernist theatre (which Webster's dictionary defines as, among other things, "typically characterized by ... ironic self-reference and absurdity"). It is beloved of drama schools, but as a piece of entertainment it's getting a bit dated now. This new (2007) version, by Ben Power and Rupert Goold (who directed the Stalinist Macbeth shown on BBC last year) brings the play right up to date, including topical issues that Pirandello never dreamt of.In this version, the play rehearsal of the original is replaced by a team of film-makers creating a documentary about assisted suicide. From a staging point of view, this means that screens are required on stage to display pre-recorded content. For an amateur drama society, that makes it very challenging in terms of staging, not to mention the difficult content (when I directed it last month, we had half a dozen people walk out and one serious letter of complaint, while others said it was the best thing they had ever seen. Alan Ayckbourn it isn't).I can't imagine an amateur society performing this play in its entirety without changes. My version omitted the suicide of the boy (try persuading a parent to let their 10-year old commit suicide on stage using a hypodermic needle), while the sex scene between the Father and the Stepdaughter is a very difficult thing to stage tastefully. The discussion between the Theatre-Makers and the Exec also has to be made specific to your actual production.Goold and Power have added a wholly new fourth act, where the post-modernist absurdity spirals off into strange territory, with a DVD commentary on the play that the audience has just seen and a discussion of how it is to be staged, followed by a conversation between Pirandello himself and his house-keeper on how to finish the play.Six Characters challenges us to examine how we view reality. The film-makers claim to be holding "the mirror up to nature", but recent controversies have shown that television reality is even more compromised than fiction (Peter Fincham, referenced in the script, is the BBC Controller forced to resign over footage that misleadingly seemed to show the Queen storming out of an interview in 2007).As the play progresses, we are seduced by the idea that fiction is actually more real than any reality we can perceive. We grow up, we grow old, we die. Our hair turns grey, our opinions shift, we swap Socialist Worker for the Daily Telegraph. Reality changes but fiction is eternal, and once a character's story is told he takes on a life of his own.For all its unsettling tragedy, Six Characters has a great deal of humour. But more than that, it celebrates the triumph of fiction and the creative imagination. Hamlet might not be real, but he shows us more about ourselves than Jerry Springer or Wife Swap ever will.

I was intrigued by the idea of this play, but it really only has one joke - some random characters turn up, speak every sentence with an exclamation mark at the end, and demand a play be written about them. The translation is awful, the dialogue is clunky, and the text is littered with so many exclamation marks that it looks like you could be reading the script for an episode of "Eastenders". Poor - at best.

Item as expected. Good service.

Excellent

great book

The introduction / Publisher's notes are very helpful in contextualisation and for the author's background. I'd recommend this edition to anyone intending to study the play.

the master

ok

I've just finished Luigi Pirandello's 'Six Characters in Search of an Author', and wonder why I bothered struggling with it. I have read that it is metatheatrical absurdism, and if that is a fancy term for incomprehensible, then I agree with the description. Although I grasped the central premise, that just because an author stops writing about characters, doesn't mean that the characters stop existing. However, where the play failed, in my opinion, is in making the persons in it believable, so that I was never able to leave the realm of trying to figure things out and actually become involved in the play. It was a difficult book to read from start to finish. Unless I were taking a course that involved reading more experimental theatre, I don't think I will be reading Pirandello again.Six Characters in Search of an Author Six Characters in Search of an Author

had to read this book for my ital. lit. class and was pretty good. Came in good condition and easy to read.

Nice book good quality bit costly

Pirandello's most famous play reads and plays as though it was written today. A "concept" play that looks at the "life imitates art" concept quite literally. A family arrives at a theatre requiring actors and an author to adequately tell their despondent story and Pirandello shows art v commerce as the family, emotionally driven by truth, trying to find satisfaction in having their told by commercially driven creators and ego driven actors. The dramatic conclusion is made more powerful by the reaction of the theatre company. As a choice for production, this is in public domain, settings are minimal yet creative, a plentiful cast and two "intermissions" that allow audience to stretch and reflect in conjunction with continued action of the play during which the actors continue living, just off stage for ten to fifteen minutes; the two intervals are part of the action. The play can be set in the original period or adjusted to be set today with lap-tops and iPhones. Requiring age ranges of 5 to 60, student actors work just as well. Conversely, this is also a great read and is moving and funny as so; it feeds needs even if you've no intention of mounting a production.

For the students’ sakes, I love Dover Thrift Editions, but Edward Storer’s translation of Six Characters is not so good. It uses an older version of Pirandello’s oft-revised play, thus missing important matters and including those wisely eliminated by the playwright. And it’s full of serious typos and misleading diction.Dover Thrift is a godsend. But not in this case. Though it may cost a little more, use Eric Bentley’s translation.

A classic by an extremely imaginative author. It is translated from Italian which is evident at places in somewhat stilted language. But quite readable excepting of course the complex and often ambiguous relationships among the characters.

The real beginning of the absurdist movement. It is actually a philosophical argument between Plato and Aristotle put into the framework of a play. Nominalism vs. Realism in the aftermath of the First World War..

Good if you are an actor.

I am glad that I read this classic. It was clever but a little boring.

good product. arrived fast.

A different and interesting read with sometimes lengthy “philosophizing”. My favorite question was, Which is more real; a character or you? If your reality changes, doesn’t this automatically make it an illusion?!

Pirandello asks us to consider the idea that we are looking for an author to write, or rewrite our lives. But we each want to be our own author, characters and actors with complete control of our story. In this classic the various characters get out of hand - they cannot be controlled!

Existentialism at its best in this play. Six lost characters looking to play out the drama of their lives find a manager willing to hear them out, but he can't possibly grasp the reality of their situation. Well written and enjoyable as it is painful to read.

I enjoyed reading this play. I'd love to see it performed on stage.

Honestly, I found it just too depressing and the language too old fashioned and verbose to be very enjoyable, though it was undoubtedly well written.