Six Characters in Search of an Author is a hard play to perform successfully. Written in 1921 (and heavily revised in 1925) by influential Sicilian playwright Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters attempts to blur the line between theatrical illusion and reality. The concept of the play is simple yet clever: the audience observes what appears to be a typical rehearsal for an upcoming Pirandello play titled The Rules of the Game. However, the rehearsal is unexpectedly interrupted by the arrival of six “characters” who are looking for an author with whom they can share their living drama. It doesn’t take long for the typical rehearsal to become a full-fledged play as the characters live out their sordid tale in front of the actors and director.
For this play to be successful in the way that Pirandello intended it to be, the audience must believe that what they are watching is actually a real rehearsal with real actors acting as they would actually act if they were not acting at all (got that?) This is not a simple task. In order for the line of illusion that separates the audience from the stage to be successfully obscured, the actors must convince the audience that what they are watching is a real rehearsal, and not a play about a rehearsal. If this is done properly, the audience becomes extremely self-aware, since they are watching the six characters performing for the actors, who in turn are all performing for them.
The biggest problem with the recent Victoria College Drama Society production of Six Characters was that as a whole, the actors were not able to convince the audience that what they were observing was in fact just a typical rehearsal (which then melts into a brilliantly strange drama). Stiff line deliveries and over-indication produced Brechtian caricatures of what actors in rehearsal actually act like. The full effect of Pirandello’s work is achieved by playing the actors as completely real. Unfortunately, instead of just watching the actors be, the effect was watching the actors be actors. This served all too well to remind the audience that they were only watching a play, and highlighted the theatrical line that Six Characters was intended to shatter.
In performing Six Characters, achieving a strong realistic base is extremely important, which is why some of the casting choices hurt the overall impact of the play. All things being equal, it should be noted that this was primarily a student production, so it is understandable that some characters like The Father (who is supposed to be 50 years old) were played by actors who were visibly much younger. Unfortunately, this is not the right play to try to bend the rules of realism. It seems strangely fitting that a play which comments so heavily on the nature of illusion, depends so heavily on the proper execution of one fragile deception to be completely successful in conveying its message.
Although the production ultimately fell short of spectacular, there were several partially redeeming performances. Julia Doran, playing the Mother, gave one of the best performances of the ensemble, standing out as a real talent despite the introverted nature of her character. Other notable performances included Patrick John Murray as the Boy and Melissa Nasso as the mysterious Mme. Pace. Richard Rotter, who played the Technician, and Glenn Walsh as the Director both had the occasional good comic moments as well.
The blocking (stage movement) for the most part was pretty static, and at times made the story difficult to follow (the person sitting next to me fell asleep four times).
It is important emphasize that Six Characters is a very challenging play to approach artistically, and some credit is definitely due just for staging the work. In the end, the largest flaw in the VCDS production was its failure to create an effective illusion of realism from which the audience can leap forward into the dark and twisted drama-world of the “real” lives of the Characters.
In writing this play, Pirandello asked many important questions about the validity of the self: isn’t everybody just an actor constantly playing themselves, just like the Characters do?
Near the beginning of the second act, the Director delivers a line that accurately sums up this production as a whole: “The man’s starting to think about the critics now! Let them say what they like. It’s up to us to put on the play if we can.”
