FREE ESSAY ON STAGING IN SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR

STAGING IN SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR

Staging in Six Characters in Search of an Author
Pirandello's masterpiece, Six Characters in Search of an Author is well known for its
innovative techniques of characterization, especially in the fullness of character as
exhibited by the Stepdaughter and the Father, but it is especially renowned, and
rightfully so, for the brilliant staging techniques employed by its author. Pirandello
uses his innovative staging techniques specifically to symbolize, within the confines of
the theater, the blending of the theater and real life.
Chief among these, of course, is the way in which the author involves the audience in his
production, to the point which, like a medieval audience, they become part of the action,
and indeed, a character in its own right. The use of lines provided in the playbill was
the first of its kind; never before had an author dared to ask the members of the
audience to perform, even though unpaid, and indeed, paying for the experience
themselves. But without those lines, how much less impressive would that moment be when
the Director, understandably at the end of his rope with the greedy characters (who have
been from the start trying to coerce him into writing a script for non-union wages),
shouts Reality! Fantasy! Who needs this! What does this mean? and the audience, in
unison, shouts back, It's us! We're here! The moment immediately after that, when the
whole cast laughs directly at the audience, pointing at them in glee, is nearly
unbearable for an audience, as shown by the riot after the first performance, when the
audience not only ripped the seats out of the theater, but stole the popcorn.
Pirandello also used a technique he inherited from the Cirque de Soleil, involving a
trapeze hung from the catwalk. But though the trapeze was not in itself his own
invention, its use during the intermission as a means to annoy the audience was
absolutely innovative. He had gotten the idea from watching the inhabitants at the mental
institution in Switzerland where his wife was recuperating from a Venetian holiday. The
Swiss hospital, renowned for its experimentation, had started a program of gymnastics,
meant to boost the patients' self-esteem. The Stepdaughter's foray above the audience's
heads, during the intermission, is a direct reflection of that Swiss technique; no one
before Pirandello had dared to use it in the theater before, but it not only symbolized
neatly the problems with defining reality inherent in the text, but kept the audience
from actually getting a rest during the intermission, since they couldn't tell when it
started and began.
Last, though still important, would be Pirandello's nod to Brecht, with his medieval
circular staging. With the voices of the Actors, the Director, and the Characters coming
at them from all sides, and with the members of the cast actually clambering over the
audience members as if they (or indeed their seats) were not there, Pirandello
masterfully tied the audience members inextricably in to the action, bringing home the
meaning.
For the main truth of Pirandello's play is that not only is there no difference between
art and reality, there is no reality, or perhaps more specifically, no art, at all, and
indeed, no members of the cast anymore than there are members of the audience. In the
final analysis, the only difference between the cast members in Pirandello's play and the
members of his audience is that one paid to get in and the other got hired.