" ... "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. We perceive this when, tragically perhaps, in something we do, we are as it were, suspended, caught up in the air on a kind of hook. We perceive that all of us was not in that act, and that it would be an atrocious injustice to judge us by that action alone, as if all our existence were summed up in that one deed."
"A man will die, a writer, the instrument of creation: but what he has created will never die! And to be able to to live for ever you don't need to have extraordinary gifts or be able to do miracles. Who was Sancho Panza? Who was Prospero? But they will live for ever because - living seeds - they had the luck to find a fruitful soil, an imagination which knew how to grow them and feed them, so that they will live for ever." (Six Characters in Search of an Author, 1921)
"Six Characters in Search of an Author" (Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore) A COMEDY IN THE MAKING By Luigi Pirandello [1921] English version by Edward Storer [New York: E. P. Dutton, 1922] * online @ vl-theatre.com
Revolution in Physics (Einstein) The Uncertenty Principle. "by creating a reality... which is discovered to be vain and illusory."
Revolutions: Russia -- Marxism in Action, the Concept (Collective v. Individual)
Futurism, Constructivism & Dystopia. Crisis, Agony and/or new Birth? New Ideas and the old forms (The Church). The return of the "Art for Art's Case" (drama v. life = who is real? what is real). Next step - absurdism.
Italian Fascism, the Idea of the totalitarism.
Waiting for WW II -- the Search. Two ways to see it: historical as socio-political and as ideological (philosophy).
215-2002: Can I squize Piradello in? This time transition from O'Neill and the topics -- National Theatre, Love v. Desire. Italian Existentionalism and reaction: communism, fascism, futurism, anarcism. Italy between two wars. Past = Rome (The Sunset of the West). Italian nationalism and the idea of state v. self. "The war to end of all wars" (WWI) gave birth to "Mother of All Wars" (WWII).
Old World (Europe) is lost. What is the idea of the West (Modernity)?
But don't you see that the whole trouble lies here. In words, words. Each one of us has within him a whole world 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. -Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author
Questions
-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."
[ explain ]
Notes
Six Characters in Search of an Author consists of roles-within-roles. In rehearsal preparations of a theatrical company are interrupted by the Father and his family who explain that they are characters from an unfinished dramatic works. They want to interpret again crucial moments of their lives, claiming that they are "truer" than the "real" characters. "How can we understand each other if the words I use have the sense and the value I expect them to have, but whoever is listening to me inevitably thinks that those same words have a different sense and value, because of the private world he has inside himself too. We think we understand each other: but we never do," says the Father. He tells that he has helped his wife to start a new life with her lover and the three illegitimate children born to them. The Wife claims that he forced her into the arms of another man. The Stepdaughter accuses the Father for her shame - they met before in Mme Pace's infamous house, and he did not recognize her. She was forced to turn to prostitution to support the family. The Son refuses to acknowledge his family and runs into the garden. He shots himself and the actors argue about whether the boy is dead or not. The Father insists that the events are real. The Producer says: "Make-believe?! Reality?! Oh, go to hell the lot of you! Lights! Lights! Lights!" and The Stepdaughter escapes into the audience laughing maniacally.
* 1934 Nobel Laureate in Literature : for his bold and ingenious revival of dramatic and scenic art.
Pirandello's central themes, the enigma of personality, the ambiguity of truth and reality, has been compared to explorations of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg. Pirandello once said: "I hate symbolic art in which the presentation loses all spontaneous movement in order to become a machine, an allegory - a vain and misconceived effort because the very fact of giving an allegorical sense to a presentation clearly shows that we have to do with a fable which by itself has no truth either fantastic or direct; it was made for the demonstration of some moral truth." (from Playwrights on Playwriting, ed. by Toby Cole, 1961) One of central concepts in his work is "naked mask", referring our social roles and on the stage the dialectic relationship between the actor and the character portrayed. Pirandello did not only restrict his ideas to theatre acting, but noted in his novel SI GIRA (1915), that the film actor "feels as if in exile - exiled not only from the stage, but also from himself."
Pirandello's influence can be seen on such European and American writers as Jean Anouilh, Jean-Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, Eugine Ionesco, Jean Genet, Eugene O'Neill, and Edward Albee. In Latin America, Jorge Luis Borges's questioning of the nature of identity have much in common with Pirandellian themes.
Pirandello's death was celebrated with a state funeral in spite of instructions for his funeral that stated: "When I am dead, do not clothe me. Wrap me naked in a sheet. No flowers on the bed and no lighted candle. A pauper's cart. Naked. And let no one accompany me, neither relatives nor friends. The cart, the horse, the coachmen, e basta. Burn me." Since the church opposed cremation and the Fascist Party refused to allow him a pauper¹s death, his wishes were ignored.
[ His supposed relationship with Fascism, to which he had expressed sort of enthusiasm, is now considered nothing more than a way he found to obtain an institutional assistance and sponsorship in creating his "Teatro d'Arte di Roma", having besides already personally experienced that bad enemies could cause him serious troubles (he had to graduate in Bonn because of his dispute with Roman university's director). Such a "civil manner" would be completely compliant with some of his best known plays. Criticism of fascism's "might makes right" philosophy is prominent in The New Colony. ]
major conflict -- Six Characters interrupt the daytime rehearsal of Pirandello's play. Abandoned by their author, they seek a new one to put on their drama. To the Actors chagrin, they convince the theater company's Manager and attempt to stage their unwritten play.
rising action -- The play does not adhere to a conventional model of rising action, climax, and falling action, but the rising action is possibly the harried, messy, and frantic rehearsal of the Characters' drama.
climax -- Pirandello offers the two ostensible climaxes of the Characters' drama in botched form: the sexual encounter between the Father and Step-Daughter in the back room of Madame Pace's shop at the end of Act II and the death of the Child and Boy at the end of Act III.
falling action -- In the former case, the Manager moves to the footlights to appraise the spectacle, oblivious to its pathos; in the second, a confused melee ensues, and the Manager renounces the experiment in frustration.
themes -- The theater of the theater; the Character's reality; the Eternal Moment
motifs -- The mirror; the author-function; the act divisions
symbols -- The Characters themselves, the Step-Daughter's vein, the trappings of Madame Pace's shop, the egg-shells, the Father's sack
foreshadowing -- In selling their drama to the Manager, the Father and Step-Daughter give away its plot from the outset. Otherwise, most of the play remains unpredictable, subject to what the Father calls the "Demon of Experiment."
Study Questions and Essay Topics [ homework ] 200 words *
- 1 Real and Implied Authors
- 2 The Rise of the Character: Six Characters and the Drama of Creativity
- 3 Self and Other in Society: Gossip, Shame, and Scandal
- 4 Configurations of Identity: The Family's Undoing
- 5 Narrative Space and the Multiplying Self: the Case of Uno, Nessuno E Centomila
- 6 Pirandello's Philosophers
- 7 The Author as Director: Characters and Actors
- 8 Performing Women
Three Plays by Luigi Pirandello; E. P. Dutton, 1922 [ - Six Characters in Search Of An Author: (sei Personaggi in Cerca D'Autore) A Comedy in the Making
- Act Ii.
- Act Iii.
- "Henry Iv." (enrico Quarto): A Tragedy in Three Acts
- Act I
- Act II
- Act III
- Right You Are! (if You Think So) (così è, Se VI Pare!): A Parable in Three Acts
- Act Ii.
- Act III ]
from Preface: "... In the "Six Characters" it is the turn of the artist. Can art--creative art, where the spirit would seem most autonomous--itself determine reality? No, because once "a character is born, he acquires such an independence, even of his own author, that he can be imagined by everybody in situations where the author never dreamed of placing him, and so acquires a meaning which the author never thought of giving him." In this lies the great originality of this very original play--the discovery (so Italian, when one thinks of it, and so novel, as one compares it with the traditional role of the "artist" in the European play) that the laborious effort of artistic creation is itself a dramatic theme--so unruly, so assertive, is this thing called "life" ever rising to harass and defeat anyone who would interpret, crystallize, devitalize it.
And beyond the drama lies the poetry, a poetry of mysterious symbolism made up of terror, and rebellion, and pity, and human kindliness. Let us not miss the latter, especially, in the complex mood of all Pirandello's theatre."
The Father:
Because I suffer, sir! I'm not philosophizing: I'm crying aloud the reason of my sufferings." (533)
Where to position Pirandello? Textbooks place him before O'Neill. Existentialism connection?
CHARACTERS of the Comedy in the Making (i -- AA)
THE FATHER
THE MOTHER
THE STEP-DAUGHTER
THE BOY
THE CHILD
(The last two do not speak)
THE SON
MADAME PACE
Ideas live, we die. Not only Hamlet, but Napoleon became an idea, too. Hitler, Mao. Christ-Idea is "more alive than the living"
(slogan-line from Vladimir Mayakovsky's poem was used in USSR to refer to
Lenin).
Role and "Character" (something fixed permanentely, Neitzsche's Idea of
Eternal Return -- there is a lot of it in Pirandello... and primitive
existentialism too).
Our reality doesn't change: it can't change!" (Father
533)
[ * CHE'05: Chekhov as Character. "Who is Author?" POMO take. ]
The Father (with dignity, but not offended): 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." (532)
[ existentialism page -- Camus? ]
Individual is too flexable to be a character! He is
alive!
Marxism and the Themes: see topics (top) pages. Italy and Germany as new nations in American Century. And spiritual reaction to reaction (civil wars: Spain, Russian, Germany). The choices. Kafka and the total state.
Here are two realities (poster above and painting below): which one is an illusion? could it be that art is the only TRUE reality? But art is an illusion! Is everything nothing but illusions?
The Son: 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? (536) THR413
What? Is he talking about camera?
Picasso
And we thought that author is the one who searches for characters!
What about those who never made into our memory? The silent majority, destined to vanish forever! That's why we inventented video tapes.
Who is the writer? (Pirandello) Why wasn't he call in? Why didn't he come on stage?
At the end we know the characters as people, not actors... Well, we know
Rocky, not Sylvester Stalon.
The Manager:
"...the characters don't act."
(p. 524)
The Stepdaughter:
"How I shall play it, how I shall live it..."
(526)
Method Acting? Realism of Imagination. Thought and feelings ARE real. The
ONLY real things? Existentialism and later Absurdism. What is Illusion? Illusion (hopes) as reality. Tradition of "impossibility of knowing reality" (Plato, Kant).
"...and then act what is actable." (Manager 530)
Theatre and creative process is the SUBJECT! Art as Reality. Traditions of Realism, Classicism, Symbolism? Chekhov -- Ibsen -- Strindberg.
The of reality itself is the target. The end of Modernity -- Realism of the
Late High Modernity. Absurdism and Existentialism (concept). Drama as
philosophy.
vthr aesthetics: virtual theatre & pages from The Book of Spectator
Think about It:
Impressionism was the father of
Expressionism (Luigi Pirandello, Futurism and Italian Fascism). Antirealism. Or Surrealism?
Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) [Rehearsing a
Pirandello play: Mixing It Up]
How do you understand the compositional design (3 acts)? Explain the endings. What is the significance of the inclusion of the "play within the play" at the beginning of Six Characters?
Why such a detailed description of FATHER (p. 515)?
"...So one may also be born a character in a play." (515) [Last Action
Hero, Truman Show -- the movies today]
Actors as spectators, the judges.
Never finish their stories. Why? "Open End" Structure.
Action is only indicated. Remember Oedipus? Death in the play...
Big Topics:
Writing, Stage & Film -- compare the methods of
illusion. 81/2 and Pirandello. Amarcord.
Historical Background: Freud, WW I (the first global war, American Age), Cinema... Do you see thematic continuety? Chekhov? Name the problems. HISTORICITY -- remember it. (See side-bar)
What are your questions? Our questions. Questions about the questions themselves.
Anatoly: When I was sixteen I wanted to write like Pirandello....
PS
1867-1936. MetaTheatre. "Beyond Theatre"...
[ I should ask them, students, about THEIR concept of staging it. ]
HomeWork
[ In addition to the 200 words reaction I should impose the new theory category with each new script. ]
Mini-Essay (topic): "Yes, but haven't you 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?" (Pitandello)
1. Real and Implied Authors (Characters and Authors in Luigi Pirandello by Ann Hallamore Caesar)
Isn't every writer (even the purest lyric poet) always a 'playwright' insofar as he distributes all the discourses among alien voices, including that of the 'image of the author' (as well as the author's other personae)?
Among the most enduring images of Luigi Pirandello left by his friends, family, and colleagues are those which show him performing or reading aloud from plays or novels. There are early photographs of him as a student in the late 1880s, hamming it with friends in improvised amateur dramatics on the balcony of his uncle's house in Rome and, forty years on, pictures of him as, with a singular intensity, he takes his cast through one of his play-scripts or rehearses his lead actress Marta Abba. Nor is the evidence left to us us only photographic. There are many verbal accounts of Pirandello in performance... ("Author and Actor" AA: Writer -- Character -- Actor -- Public)
The Father: But don't you see that the whole trouble lies here. In words, words. Each one of us has within him a whole world 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. Look here! This woman [Indicating the MOTHER.] takes all my pity for her as a specially ferocious form of cruelty.
@1998-2001 script * Fall 2002 THR215 Dramatic Literature: subscribe to DramLit Forum *
At this point, the DOOR-KEEPER has entered from the
stage door and advances towards the manager's table, taking
off his braided cap. During this manoeuvre, the Six
CHARACTERS enter, and stop by the door at back of stage,
so that when the DOOR-KEEPER is about to announce their
coming to the MANAGER, they are already on the stage. A tenuous light surrounds them, almost as if irradiated by
them -- the faint breath of their fantastic reality.
This light will disappear when they come forward
towards the actors. They preserve, however, something of
the dream lightness in which they seem almost suspended;
but this does not detract from the essential reality of their
forms and expressions.
He who is known as THE FATHER is a man of about 50:
hair, reddish in colour, thin at the temples; he is not bald,
however; thick moustaches, falling over his still fresh
mouth, which often opens in an empty and uncertain
smile. He is fattish, pale; with an especially wide
forehead. He has blue, oval-shaped eyes, very clear and
piercing. Wears light trousers and a dark jacket. He is
alternatively mellifluous and violent in his manner.
THE MOTHER seems crushed and terrified as if by an intolerable weight of shame and abasement. She is dressed
in modest black and wears a thick widow's veil of crêpe.
When she lifts this, she reveals a wax-like face. She always
keeps her eyes downcast.
THE STEP-DAUGHTER, is dashing, almost impudent, beautiful. She wears mourning too, but with great elegance.
She shows contempt for the timid half-frightened
manner of the wretched BOY (14 years old, and also dressed in black); on the other hand, she displays a lively
tenderness for her little sister, THE CHILD (about four),
who is dressed in white, with a black silk sash at the
waist.
THE SON (22) tall, severe in his attitude of contempt
for THE FATHER, supercilious and indifferent to THE
MOTHER. He looks as if he had come on the stage against
his will.
Door-keeper [cap in hand]. Excuse me, sir . . .
The Manager [rudely]. Eh? What is it?
Door-keeper [timidly]. These people are asking for
you, sir.
The Manager [furious]. I am rehearsing, and you
know perfectly well no one's allowed to come in during
rehearsals! [Turning to the CHARACTERS.] Who are you, please? What do you want?
The Father [coming forward a little, followed by the
others who seem embarrassed]. As a matter of fact . . .
we have come here in search of an author . . .
The Manager [half angry, half amazed]. An author?
What author?
The Father. Any author, sir.
The Manager. But there's no author here. We are not
rehearsing a new piece.
The Step-Daughter [vivaciously]. So much the better,
so much the better! We can be your new piece.
An Actor [coming forward from the others]. Oh, do
you hear that?
The Father [to
STEP-DAUGHTER]. Yes, but if the
author isn't here . . . [To MANAGER.] unless you would be willing . . .
The Manager. You are trying to be funny.
The Father. No, for Heaven's sake, what are you saying?
We bring you a drama, sir.
The Step-Daughter. We may be your fortune.
The Manager. Will you oblige me by going away? We
haven't time to waste with mad people.
The Father [mellifluously]. 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.
The Manager. What the devil is he talking about?
The Father. 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 ACTORS
look hurt and perplexed.]
The Manager [getting up and looking at him]. So our
profession seems to you one worthy of madmen then?
The Father. 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 Manager [interpreting the rising anger of the
COMPANY]. But I would beg you to believe, my dear
sir, that the profession of the comedian is a noble one.
If today, as things go, the playwrights give us stupid
comedies to play and puppets to represent instead of
men, remember we are proud to have given life to immortal
works here on these very boards! [The ACTORS,
satisfied, applaud their MANAGER.]
The Father [interrupting furiously]. Exactly, perfectly,
to living beings more alive than those who breathe
and wear clothes: beings less real perhaps, but truer! I
agree with you entirely. [The ACTORS look at one another in amazement.]
The Manager. But what do you mean? Before, you
said . . .
The Father. No, excuse me, I meant it for you, sir,
who were crying out that you had no time to lose with
madmen, while no one better than yourself knows that
nature uses the instrument of human fantasy in order to
pursue her high creative purpose.
The Manager. Very well, -- but where does all this
take us?
The Father. Nowhere! It is merely to show you that
one is born to life in many forms, in many shapes, as
tree, or as stone, as water, as butterfly, or as woman. So
one may also be born a character in a play.
The Manager [with feigned comic dismay]. So you
and these other friends of yours have been born characters?
The Father. Exactly, and alive as you see! [MANAGER
and ACTORS burst out laughing.]
The Father [hurt]. I am sorry you laugh, because we
carry in us a drama, as you can guess from this woman
here veiled in black.
The Manager [losing patience at last and almost indignant].
Oh, chuck it! Get away please! Clear out of
here! [To PROPERTY MAN.] For Heaven's sake, turn them out!
The Father [resisting]. No, no, look here, we . . .
The Manager [roaring]. We come here to work, you
know.
Leading Actor. One cannot let oneself be made such a
fool of.
The Father [determined, coming forward]. I marvel
at your incredulity, gentlemen. Are you not accustomed
to see the characters created by an author spring to life in
yourselves and face each other? Just because there is no
"book" [Pointing to the PROMPTER'S box.] which contains us, you refuse to believe . . .
The Step-Daughter [advances towards MANAGER, smiling and
coquettish]. Believe me, we are really six most
interesting characters, sir; side-tracked however.
The Father. Yes, that is the word! [To MANAGER all
at once.] In the sense, that is, that the 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. And to live for ever,
it does not need to have extraordinary gifts or to be able
to work wonders. Who was Sancho Panza? Who was Don
Abbondio? Yet they live eternally because -- live germs as
they were -- they had the fortune to find a fecundating
matrix, a fantasy which could raise and nourish them:
make them live for ever!
The Manager. That is quite all right. But what do
you want here, all of you?
The Father. We want to live.
The Manager [ironically]. For Eternity?
The Father. No, sir, only for a moment . . . in you.
An Actor. Just listen to him!
Leading Lady. They want to live, in us . . ..
Juvenile Lead [pointing to the
STEP-DAUGHTER]. I've
no objection, as far as that one is concerned!
The Father. Look here! look here! The comedy has
to be made. [To the MANAGER.] But if you and your
actors are willing, we can soon concert it among ourselves.
The Manager [annoyed]. But what do you want to
concert? We don't go in for concerts here. Here we play
dramas and comedies!
The Father. Exactly! That is just why we have come
to you.
The Manager. And where is the "book"?
The Father. It is in us! [The ACTORS laugh.] The drama is in us, and we are the drama. We are impatient
to play it. Our inner passion drives us on to this.
The Step-Daughter [disdainful, alluring, treacherous,
full of impudence]. My passion, sir! Ah, if you only
knew! My passion for him! [Points to the
FATHER and
makes a pretence of embracing him. Then she breaks out
into a loud laugh.]
The Father [angrily]. Behave yourself! And please
don't laugh in that fashion.
The Step-Daughter. With your permission, gentlemen,
I, who am a two months' orphan, will show you
how I can dance and sing. [Sings and then dances Prenez
garde à Tchou-Tchin-Tchou.]
Les chinois sont un peuple malin,
De Shangal à Pekin,
Ils ont mis des écriteaux partout:
Prenez garde à Tchou-Tchin-Tchou.
... "Things in the world may be pleasant or unpleasant, desirable or undesirable, just as they may be sweet or sour, hard or soft. But they cannot be morally good or bad. Moral value is something which springs into being only when there is an actual human agent deciding what to do, and doing it. No amount of description of the world, or of human tastes or tendencies, could bring into being any idea of value; this could be introduced only at the moment when one introduced into the description the free will of an agent. What this agent actually achieves in his attempt to act on the world is quite irrelevant to the value introduced by his act of will. Unless one knew how a man chose, what exactly he willed to bring about, then no amount of observing what he did would entitle one to assign a value to the change that he actually brought about. There is, therefore, on this theory, an immense gap between human beings and all other beings in the world. For only human beings are dynamic; only they can voluntarily bring about changes in the world, and bring them about for a particular reason. Everything in the world except an act of will can, according to Kant, be described in causal terms; and this is the same as to say that nothing has any value except the act of will, which brings values into existence."
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