The Characters “carry in us a drama” that they cannot wait to play out-as though to prove the point, the Step-Daughter abruptly begins acting out. The Father announces that they “have come here in search of an author” and offers the confused Manager to “bring you a drama, sir.” They argue about whether the Characters are mad, or the theater itself is madness-the Father insists that he and his family were simply born Characters, but their author never put them to use by putting them in a work of art. The Door-Keeper interrupts the rehearsal to announce that there are visitors, and a “tenuous light” announces the “fantastic reality” of the six Characters who enter the stage: the capricious middle-aged Father, the veiled and mourning Mother, the audacious and seductive teenaged Step-Daughter, the distant and surly 22-year-old Son, and a younger son and daughter who refuse to speak, the fourteen-year-old “half-frightened” Boy and the timid four-year-old Child.

(This play is fictional, but in the original text, the Actors rehearse the real Pirandello play The Rules of the Game.) The Leading Man objects to the “ridiculous” chef’s hat he is asked to wear, and the Manager declares that the play-within-a-play will turn out to be a “glorious failure.” The Manager walks onstage and declares it is in fact time for a rehearsal-they will be working through the Second Act of a Luigi Pirandello play, Mixing it Up.

Six Characters in Search of an Author begins by defying the conventions of theater: when the audience enters, the curtain is raised and the stage is “as it usually is during the day time.” Some of the actors, who themselves play theater Actors, hang out on stage like they might have during their rehearsals.

Characters in search of an author