Deconstructing the Stage: Circles of Conflict in Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author Dhriti Shankar College

Pirandello delights by surprising. It has been widely noted how his radically experimental play Six Characters In Search of an Author — the first in his ‘theatre in the theatre trilogy’ —proved to bring about a paradigmatic shift in the modern stage for a plethora of reasons, only a few of which can be substantiated here. Indeed, so much of critical attention perhaps has made the play eclipse other works of equal consequence by the author. Besides, it has been lamented how, with time, Pirandello's aspect of "cerebrality" gained way greater currency among admirers than his strong undercurrents of humor, partly due to inadequate English translations, and partly due to inaccurate interpretations from faulty staging (Bassnett-McGuire 28). The formal deconstruction of the stage, however, is a pervasive theme in Six Characters, in connection with which, a series of other functions of fragmentation in general are linked to form a chain of operative absurdities that whet our curiosity with continual surprises and urge the audience to probe the entire concept of stage reality anew. Even a cursory glance at the opening stage directions reveals a certain willingness on the author's part to lay stress on the process of theatricality which...