Six Characters in Search of an Author

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be seen and heard. The idea is shocking to say the least and as predictable it was like a massive weapon that eradicated the last remains of old realistic drama, the moment it saw daylight.

Luigi Pirandello" "six characters in search of an author" launches one's mind into the realms of the Absurd. One's mind has to be ready to delve into the impossible; only then this rewarding piece of literature will be a fruitful read. Pirandello's work plays with the central tension in the modern theater between the desire to create a perfect illusion of extra-theatrical reality on the stage and the contrary impulse to celebrate the very illusoriness of all theater. Modern drama calls attention to the fact that theater is both a representational art, like painting or writing, and a performing art, like dance or music. The actors on stage are at the same time real people and representatives of fictional characters. One of the startling elements of Pirandello's play is the separation ...

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the mechanicals' play of Pyramis and Thisbe in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and tragically in "Hamlet". Modern Metatheater begins with the futurists and Dadaists and reaches the mainstream with Pirandello; the metatheatrical impulse plays a particularly important role in the works of later playwrights such as Samuel Beckett and Tom Stoppard. Like Anton Chekhov, Pirandello came to the theater after having already established himself as a writer of short stories and novels. His prose fiction deals with themes related to the illusory character of personal identity, and it also formed the basis of some of his early plays. "Six Characters in search of an author" stands out from Pirandello's ...

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