Six Characters in Search of an Author

“It’s a mixing up of the parts, according to which you who act your own part become the puppet of yourself.”

The Manager’s explanation of the fictional Pirandello play’s characters doubles as a humorous summary of the thematic questions asked by the play. Whether it is the actors taking the parts of the characters or a character authoring the details of another character’s actions, all the characters of the play become puppets.

“Oh, sir, you know well that life is full of infinite absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true. [...] I say that to reverse the ordinary process may well be considered a madness: that is, to create credible situations, in order that they may appear true. But permit me to observe that if this be madness, it is the sole raison d’être of your profession, gentlemen.”

The Father positions life and theater as opposites. Life, because it is natural, is absurd but truthful. Theater is a process that favors credibility and order to create the appearance of truth. This ordering process, he argues, is the actual madness. His understanding of theater is at odds with that of the Manager’s. This conflict informs their disagreements about staging the characters’ drama throughout the rest of the play.

“Well, to make seem true that which isn’t true…without any need…for a joke as it were…Isn’t that your mission, gentlemen: to give life to fantastic characters on the stage?”

The Father articulates what sounds to be the traditional understanding of acting, but he uses the terms life and true in different ways. To the Father, life is not a biological function but rather a reflection of the soul. Truth means to capture that essence more so than factual accuracy. His question to the actors and Manager reveals why he has sought a theater company to stage the characters’ drama.

“[T]he author who created us alive no longer wished, or was no longer able, materially to put us into a work of art. And this was a real crime, sir; because he who has had the luck to be born a character can laugh even at death. He cannot die. The man, the writer, the instrument of the creation will die, but his creation does not die.”

The Father describes the lasting nature of a work of art. The immortality of art causes the artwork to acquire meanings outside of the author’s intentions. The author initially uses the character as a tool for their ideas. But after the author’s death, the author’s role as a tool for creation is also gone. This leaves the characters and ideas to continue without their author.

“We are the audience this time.”

The role of the audience is an important part of both the theatrical art form and identity creation. The actors are now the observers of the characters, who work to create an accurate image of themselves for the audience.

“But don’t you see that the whole trouble lies here. In words, words. Each one of us has within him a whole word of things, each man of us his own special world. And how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. We think we understand each other, but we never really do.”

The Father identifies the subjectivity and power of words as the source of miscommunication. Because of the need to translate words, conflicts over meaning are inevitable. The Manager and the Father often misunderstand each other because of their differing uses of the same words.

“But a fact is like a sack which won’t stand up when it is empty. In order that it may stand up, one has to put into it the reason and sentiment which have caused it to exist.”

The Father explains the subjectivity of facts by comparing them to a sack that needs to be filled. The things that fill the sack and contextualize a fact include motivations and feelings. This subjectivity is seen in the variations in the facts of the events when described between Characters.

“For the drama lies all in this—in the conscience that I have, that each one of us has. We believe this conscience to be a single thing, but it is many-sided. There is one for this person, and another for that. Diverse consciences. So we have this illusion of being one person for all, of having a personality that is unique in all our acts. But it isn’t true.”

The multiplicity of identity contrasts a living being with a character. The singular identity is an illusion, just like a character in play. The Father returns to this connection between identity and theater more explicitly later in the play. His understanding of identity informs his belief that he should not be defined by one singular moment.

“No action can therefore be hoped for from me in this affair. Believe me, Mr. Manager, I am an ‘unrealized’ character, dramatically speaking; and I find myself not at all at ease in their company. Leave me out of it, I beg you.”

The Son attempts to place authorship outside of himself. Without an author, he claims, he cannot create an identity that connects to the drama. Yet it is this lack of development that leads to his aloofness that puts the events of the tragedy in action.

“But here, my dear sir, the characters don’t act. Here the actors do the acting. The characters are there, in the ‘book’ […] when there is a ‘book’!”

The Manager describes a traditional understanding of theater and attempts to organize the characters and their drama according to these conventions. He emphasizes the importance of a book, reflecting the authority of a singular author when telling a story.

“But that is the real name of your wife. We don’t want to call her by her real name.”

The preference to not use her real name reflects how theater is not trying to literally recreate reality. The Mother is different from the character being performed by the actor, so the Manager feels it is logical to use a different name to signify their different identities.

“On the stage, you as yourself, cannot exist. The actor here acts you, and that’s an end to it!”

The Manager expresses the conventional understanding of acting. Actors are not themselves, but rather a character. This character must be shaped according to dramatic conventions, even if it is not reflective of what the Father thinks of as himself. The Manager underscores the unreality of theater and the impossible of existing onstage.

“It will be difficult to act me as I really am. The effect will be rather—apart from the make-up—according as to how he supposes I am, as he senses me—if he does sense me—and not as I inside of myself feel myself to be.”

Unlike the Step-Daughter, the Father minimizes factual accuracy like that attained by makeup. For the Father, capturing what he feels is his inner essence is more important. Like in his discussion of words, he worries about how his identity will be translated by the actor.

“Both of them act our part exceedingly well. But, believe me, it produces quite a different effect on us. They want to be us, but they aren’t all the same.”

The Father identifies a key difference between acting and living when complimenting the acting but seeing it as incomplete and inaccurate. The importance of the audience in interpreting performances is emphasized. The audience gives actors purpose and the success of the performance is defined by the audience.

“Acting is our business here. Truth up to a certain point, but no further.”

The Manager expresses a traditional understanding of acting and authorship. He uses the word truth to mean literal accuracy, in contrast to the Father. This belief underscores his approach to telling stories: focusing on making a good play. Some things cannot be staged.

“The eternal moment! She is here to catch me, fix me, and hold me eternally in the stocks for that one fleeting and shameful moment of my life. She can’t give it up! And you sire, cannot either fairly spare me it.”

When the Mother describes how her “torment” constantly “renew[s]” (39), the Father coins the term the eternal moment. Despite the fleeting nature of the event temporally, the extremity of the emotions lasts for eternity. He describes how his identity is now fixed to one moment by the Step-Daughter, just as the Step-Daughter’s identity is, too. The play itself mimics this idea with key moments repeatedly re-enacted throughout the play.

“[S]tanding like this […] with my head so, and my arms round his neck, I saw a vein pulsing in my arm here; and then, as if that live vein had awakened disgust in me, I closed my eyes like this, and let my head sink on his breast.”

The vein becomes a physical object for the Step-Daughter to latch onto during sex work. It allows her to not focus on what is happening as a sex worker. The vein is both a distraction and physical proof of the event. Seeing the vein on her arm also reflects her life force.

“The illusion, I tell you, sir, which we’ve got to create for the audience […] The illusion of a reality.”

The Manager and the Father use the word illusion in different ways. The Manager uses the word here to indicate an emotional experience that represents reality. The illusion of theater is powerful and the audience conventionally expects theater to create an illusion.

“A character, sir, may always ask a man who he is. Because a character has really a life of his own, marked with his especial characteristics; for which reason he is always ‘somebody.’ But a man—I’m not speaking of you now—may very well be ‘nobody.’”

The Father uses a character to represent art. Art challenges its audience by asking questions. By being a part of the larger artwork, a character like the Father is empowered to question a human being like the Manager. The Father’s belief in a character as being fixed in time contributes to his belief that characters are somebodies. Art makes them immortal. Because human experiences are fleeting, they are illusions and nobodies.

“[Y]ou too must not count overmuch on your reality as you feel it today, since, like that of yesterday, it may prove an illusion for you tomorrow.”

The Father contrasts the theater with life. From his point of view, the fluidity of identity and life make the real humans more illusionary than the characters, who have a fixed identity within one moment in time. When a person looks back on their life, their past self feels like as much a character as the characters in the play. This way of understanding identity and theater contrasts with the traditional understanding represented by the Manager.

“If you want to know, it seems to me you are trying to imitate the manner of a certain author whom I heartily detest—I warn you—although I have unfortunately bound myself to put on one of his works. As a matter of fact, I was just starting to rehearse it, when you arrived.”

The Manager refers again to Pirandello. The existence of the real Pirandello in a fictional work further contributes to the blurring of fiction and reality. The reference to the earlier rehearsal also suggests a circular nature to the whole play itself. The Manager’s irritation at the Father imitating Pirandello is a mirror to the Father’s irritation with the actors imitating the characters.

“Drama is action, sir, action and not confounded philosophy.”

The Manager expresses a traditional understanding of theater. The play itself ironically is just the opposite as it focuses on characters like the Father exposing their beliefs.

“Yes, but haven’t you yet perceived that it isn’t possible to live in front of a mirror which not only freezes us with the image of ourselves, but throws our likeness back at us with a horrible grimace?”

The Son describes how an observer can only create a distorted version of what they saw. The freezing of the face mimics a commedia dell’arte mask, reducing a character to a single emotion in one moment in time.