If you’re looking for a breezy Saturday night, stop reading now: Six Characters in Search of an Author isn’t light fare.
The Department of Performing Arts’ first performance is an adaptation of Luigi Pirandello’s iconic play, Six Characters In Search Of An Author, directed by department Chair Derek Goldman. With a cast of 21, Goldman seeks to reinterpret Pirandello’s controversial 1921 play, which features a complex discussion on the metaphysical nature of theater, with characters questioning their own existence within the realm of scripts and stories. The distinction between fiction and fact, between the play’s characters and the actors who play them is blurred.
The story’s plot revolves around the appearance of six fictional characters (by the play’s standards) in the “real” world (i.e. the world of the play). Specifically, the middle of a performance of Hamlet, directed by Joshua Goode (COL ’10) who plays the “Director.”
The six characters are equally vaguely named. Played in a delightfully disturbing manner by Mike Mitchell (COL ’10), the “Father” serves as the mouthpiece of the fictional characters and the liaison between theater and reality. His Stepdaughter is played by Caitlin Cassidy (COL ’10) with vigor and passion as to the appropriate the part, possessing equal parts agony and despair. Nikki Massoud (COL ’10) doesn’t say much, but, as the Mother, she acknowledges the misfortunes of the family.
An elaborate array of mirrors greets playgoers as they enter the theater, serving not only as an eerie stage effect but also as a metaphor for the faint separation between fact and fiction. The six characters, looking very much like the Addams family, appear on the stage in grand fashion, helped by the dramatic sound effects and morbid incandescent lighting. Bombarded by this surprising and frightening entrance, the cast and crew of Hamlet stare in confusion as the characters tell their tale of incest, affair, prostitution, and death. What could come off as some twisted form of postmodern comedy becomes a sincere insight into existence and reality.
Although the epic finale of Six Characters is an absolute sensory feast, the plot has no obvious beginning or end, and it is intended that you depart with the performance playing over and over again in your head. Summarizing the Father: the author will die, but the characters live forever.
