Six Characters in Search of an Author

Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello recounts the fate of a family of characters left unrealized by their author. Desperate to come to life, the characters interrupt the rehearsal of another Pirandello play and demand that the director and cast stage their story. Taking the theater itself as its setting and subject, this absurdist meta-theatrical play draws upon the relations between all the major players of the dramatic spectacle—directors, actors, characters, spectators, and critics—to "present every possible conflict." As such a deeply self- referential or meta-theatrical work, Six Characters is also a key exercise in what Pirandello termed "il teatro dello specchio" or "the mirror theater," a play that turns a mirror onto the theater itself.