Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) - Luigi Pirandello
Related: 1900s literature - 1921 - theatre of the absurd - Italian literature - theatre - fourth wall - self-reference
Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) - Luigi Pirandello [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK]
It has been said that Carolo Lorenzini's Pinocchio (1881 - 1883) was one of the inspiring themes of Luigi Pirandello's Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore. As in the allegory of the story, Pinocchio eventually went on to lead his own independent life, distinct from that of the author. [Jul 2006]
Fourth wall in Six Characters:
In Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, the fourth wall is not even there to be broken down. Some actors are getting ready for rehearsal when six characters whose author has died, leaving them incomplete, enter the room. The director decides to include the characters in the play they are rehearsing and soon all the lines between fiction and reality have disappeared. [Jul 2006]
Description
Six Characters in Search of an Author (Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore) is the most famous play of Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello, it premiered in Italy in 1921 and was first published in 1925. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Characters_in_Search_of_an_Author [Jan 2006]
Play in three acts by Luigi Pirandello, produced and published in Italian in 1921 as Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore. Introducing Pirandello's device of the "theater within the theater," the play explores various levels of illusion and reality. It had a great impact on later playwrights, particularly such practitioners of the Theater of the Absurd as Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, and Jean Genet, as well as Jean Anouilh and Jean-Paul Sartre.--The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
The theme Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author has been weaved into film a number of times: the Lickerish Quartet by Metzger, Pasolini's Teorema. Francois Ozon's Sitcom is said to be based on Teorema.
Pirandellian films