Eric Bentley
credits Pirandello as being the first playwright to actually use the stage as a
stage. In his most renowned masterpiece "Six Characters in Search of an
Author" Pirandello uses stage in the most unique way. The play is an
absurdist metatheatrical play about the relationship between authors, their
characters, and theatre practitioners. It premiered at the Teatro Valle in Rome
to a mixed reception, with shouts from the audience of "Manicomio!"
("Madhouse!"). I wonder how many in the audience realized that the
"madhouse" they had witnessed was a turning point in the history of
drama.
When the lights
come up on Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921), the
first thing the audience sees is a bare stage, with no scenery and only a few
folding tables and chairs scattered about. The curtain is up, the stage is
empty of props and background, and the lights illuminate the bare wall at the
back of the stage. A stage-hand
is starting to build a set, but the stage manager interrupts him to say that it
is time for rehearsal. The producer and a company of actors arrive and begin
reading out stage directions; the actors complain about the script, but the
producer (who also serves as director) explains that he “can’t get hold of good
French plays any more so that now we’re reduced to putting on plays by
Pirandello.”
The play they are
rehearsing is called "The Rules of the Game". It is an actual play by Pirandello. The technique he uses here is called
"play within a play", which is an ancient concept and a frequently
used technique in theatre. But in this play Pirandello took the
metatheatrical games to a new level.
Suddenly, this
ordinary rehearsal is interrupted by the sudden entrance of six characters. These characters are simply identified as
Father, Mother, Stepdaughter, Son, Boy, and Girl. They are six unfinished characters who
have stories to tell, stories of their lives, but it is not fully written. They
were abandoned by their author so they are searching for a new one in hopes of
completing their story. As Pirandello said in his 1925 introduction to the
play: "Every creature of fantasy and art, in order to exist, must have his
drama, that is, a drama in which he may be a character and for which he is a
character. This drama is the character's raison d'etre, his vital function,
necessary for his existence."
The play than
proceeds with the characters telling their stories, some scenes of incidents in
their lives, which are accompanied by comments, quarrels, dialogues, interactions
among the characters, between the characters and the actors, the director and
the characters etc. It creates a theatrical Hall of Mirror effect. The actors
who will acting the parts of this six characters become the audience of their
life story. For them the stage becomes more real than the world and the
line between reality and acting, imagination and fiction becomes blurred.
