About the work
Six Characters in Search of an Author (Italian "Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore") is a play by Luigi Pirandello, premiered in Rome in 1921. The revolutionary meta-drama shattered the conventions of theatre and made Pirandello world-famous; it is regarded as a key work of theatrical modernism.
Plot
While a theatre company holds a rehearsal, six strange figures intrude onto the stage: they claim to be unfinished characters whom their author failed to complete, and they demand that their tragic story be performed. Urgently they recount and enact their family drama of guilt, betrayal, and death, while the director and actors try in vain to translate it into conventional theatre. The boundary between fiction and reality blurs until the performance ends in confusion and a real death.
Cultural significance
Six Characters in Search of an Author revolutionised modern theatre by radically questioning the illusion of the stage and making the relationship between author, character, actor, and reality its subject. The initial scandal of the premiere soon gave way to worldwide recognition. Pirandello's play with identity, truth, and theatricality anticipated all the meta- and illusion-theatre of the twentieth century and contributed to his Nobel Prize.