Six Characters in Search of an Author (Plot Summary)

Plot Summary

Act I

When Six Characters in Search of an Author begins, the stage is being prepared for the daytime rehearsal of a play and several actors and actresses are milling about as the Producer enters and gets the rehearsal started. Suddenly the guard at the stage door enters and informs the Producer that six people have entered the theatre asking to see the person in charge. These six “characters” are a Father, a Mother, a 22-year-old Son, a Stepdaughter, an adolescent Boy, and young female Child. These “characters” claim that they are the incomplete creations of an author who couldn’t finish the work for which they were conceived. They have come looking for someone who will take up their story and embody it in some way, helping them to complete their sense of themselves.

The Producer and his fellow company members are initially incredulous, convinced that these “people” have escaped from a mental institution. But the Father, speaking for the other characters, argues that they are just as “real” as the people getting ready to rehearse their play. Fictional characters, he maintains, are more “alive” because they cannot die as long as the works they live in are experienced by others. The Father explains that he and the other “characters” want to achieve their full life by completing the story that now only exists in fragments in the author’s brain.

The Stepdaughter and Father begin to tell their “story.” The Father was married to the Mother but left her many years ago when she became attracted to a young assistant or secretary in his employ. Though the Father was angered by his wife’s feelings and sent his young assistant away, he grew impatient with his wife’s melancholy and sent their son away, to be raised and educated in the country. He eventually turned his wife out and she sought her lover, bearing three more children by him before the man died two months before the play begins. These three children and the son from her marriage with the Father stand before the Producer and his theatrical troupe.

The Father’s version of these events is variously contested both by the Mother and the Stepdaughter. The Father claims that he turned his wife out because of his concern for her and his natural son and that later he was genuinely concerned for his wife’s new family. However, the Mother claims the Father forced her into the arms of the assistant because he was simply bored with her, and the Stepdaughter claims that the father stalked her sexually as she was growing up. They all agree that eventually the Father lost track of his stepchildren because the wife’s lover took different jobs and moved repeatedly. When the lover died, the family fell into extreme financial need and the father happened upon his Stepdaughter in Madame Pace’s brothel where the Stepdaughter was attempting to raise money to support the family.

Both the Father and Stepdaughter are anxious to play the scene in the brothel because both think the portrayal will demonstrate their version of that meeting. The daughter asserts that the father knew who she was and desired her incestuously while the father claims he did not know her and immediately refused the sexual union when he recognized her — even before the Mother discovered them in the room. After the incident, the Father took his wife and stepchildren home, where his natural son resented their implicit demands on his father.

The Producer and actors become intrigued by this story and are anxious to play it, putting aside their original skepticism about whether or not these “people” are “real.” The Producer requests the “characters” to come to his office to work out a scenario.

Act II

The Producer’s plan is for the “characters” to act out their story, starting with the scene in Madame Pace’s brothel, while the prompter takes down their dialogue in shorthand for the actors of the company to study and imitate. The “characters” suggest that they can act out the story more authentically, but the Producer insists on artistic autonomy and overrules their objections. It is soon discovered that Madame Pace is not available for the scene, but the Father entices her into being by recreating the hat rack in her brothel and she appears — much to the consternation of the acting company, who immediately consider it some kind of trick.

When they begin the scene in the brothel, the Producer is initially dissatisfied with Madame Pace’s performance and the Mother disrupts the scene with her consternation over what’s being acted out, but finally the Producer is pleased with what he sees and asks the actors to take over for the Father and Stepdaughter. However, the Stepdaughter cannot help but laugh when she sees how the actors represent their scene in such a different manner from the way she sees it herself. But when the Father and Stepdaughter resume the acting themselves, the Producer censors the scene by not permitting the Stepdaughter to use a line about disrobing. He explains that such suggestiveness would create a riot in the audience. The Stepdaughter accuses the Producer of collaborating with the Father to present the scene in a way that flatters him and misrepresents the truth of what the Father had done. The Stepdaughter asserts that to present the drama accurately the suffering Mother must be excused. But as the Mother is explaining her torment, the final confrontation of the scene is actually played out, with the Mother entering the brothel to discover the Stepdaughter in the Father’s arms. The Producer is pleased with the dramatic moment and declares that this will be the perfect time for the curtain to fall. A member of the stage crew, hearing this comment, mistakes it for an order and actually drops the curtain.

Act III

When the curtain rises again, the scene to be acted out is in the Father’s house after the discovery at the brothel. The Producer is impatient with the suggestions given him by the “characters” about how to play the scene while the “characters” don’t like references to stage “illusion,” believing as they do that their lives are real. The Father points out to the Producer that the confidence the Producer has about the reality of his own personal identity is an illusion as well, that the key elements of his personality and identity change constantly while those of the “characters” stay constant. The Producer decides that regardless of what the “characters” want to propose, the next action will be played with everyone in the garden.

After considerable squabbling between the “characters” as to how the scene should be portrayed and after the revelation that the Little Boy has a revolver in his pocket, the Son reluctantly begins telling the story of what he saw when he rushed out of his room and went out to the garden. Behind the tree he saw the Little Boy “standing there with a mad look in his eyes. . . looking into the fountain at his little sister, floating there, drowned.” Suddenly, a shot rings out on stage and the Mother runs over toward the Boy and several actors join her, discover the Boy’s body, and carry him off. It appears to some actors that this “character” is actually dead, but other actors cry that it’s only make-believe. The exasperated Producer exclaims that he has lost an entire day of rehearsal and the play ends with a tableaux of the “characters,” first in shadow with the Little Girl and Little Boy missing, and then in a trio of Father, Mother, and Son with the Stepdaughter laughing maniacally and exiting the theatre.

Media Adaptations

• Six Characters in Search of an Author was presented in a full-length film version in 1992 by BBC Scotland, starring John Hurt as the Father, Brian Cox as the Producer, Tara Fitzgerald as the Stepdaughter, and Susan Fleetwood as the Mother. Adapted by Michael Hastings and produced by Simon Curtis, the film was directed by Bill Bryden. In 1996, the 110 minute film was released on videocassette with a teacher’s guide.
• In 1987, sections of Six Characters in Search of an Author were represented in an episode on Pirandello for the BBC Channel 4 South Bank Show series called The Modern World: Ten Great Writers. This documentary recreated a day in the life of Pirandello’s acting troupe as they brought Six Characters in Search of an Author to London in 1925. The show was written and adapted by Nigel Wattis and Gillian Greenwood and produced and directed by Nigel Wattis. Hosted by series editor Melvyn Bragg, the episode featured Jim Norton as Pirandello, Douglas Hodge as the Producer, Reginald Stewart as the Father, Sylvestra LeTouzel as the Stepdaughter, and Patricia Thorns as the Mother.
• A 59-minute videocassette version of Six Characters in Search of an Author was presented in 1978 as part of an educational television series called Drama: Play, Performance, Perception, hosted by Jose Ferrer. A co-production of Miami-Dade Community College, the BBC, and the British Open University, the episode was directed by John Selwyn Gilbert and included actors Charles Gray, Nigel Stock, and Mary Wimbush. The film was also distributed in 1978 by Insight Media and Films Inc. with actor Ossie Davis as guest commentator and additional direction by Andrew Martin. This version was re-released in 1992 as a 60 minute videocassette.
• A 48-minute audiovisual cassette version of the play was presented by the British Broadcasting Corporation in cooperation with the British Open University in 1976.
• A 58-minute VHS videocassette version of the play was produced in 1976 by Films for the Humanities (Princeton, New Jersey) in their History of Drama series as an example of Theatre of the Absurd. It was produced by Harold Mantell, directed by Ken Frankel, translated by David Calicchio, and narrated by Joseph Heller, with music by William Penn. The actors included Nikki Flacks, Ben Kapen, Gwendolyn Brown, Dimo Comdos, Bob Picardo, and Kathy Manning. In the same year this version was also released on two reels of 16 mm film with accompanying textbook, teacher’s guides, and two film-strips. The film was re-released in 1982 in Beta and VHS, in 1988 in VHS, and in 1988 in a 52-minute version.
• A commentary on the play by Alfred Brooks called “Pirandello’s Illusion Game” was released on audiocassette in 1971 from the Center for Cassette Studies.
• A 38-minute commentary on the play on audiocassette by Paul D’Andrea was released in 1971 by Everett and Edwards out of Deland, Florida, in the Modern Drama Cassette Curriculum series. Another commentary by Robert James Nelson was released in 1973 as part of their World Literature Cassette Curriculum series.
• A production of Six Characters in Search of an Author appeared on BBC television on April 20, 1954 in a translation by Frederick May.