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Luigi Pirandello - Six Characters In Search Of An Author (BBC MP

Heard
1959
Episodes
1
Language
English

Six Characters in Search of an Author

More about it

by Luigi Pirandello

Translated by Frederick May in 1954 from Luigi Pirandello's play", first performed in 1921 at the Teatro Valle in Rome.

Adapted and Produced by H. B. Fortuin for BBC World Theatre

BBC Home Service: Monday 27th July 1959

When the play 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…

Episodes, in broadcast order

  1. Six Characters in Search of an Author (BBC MP

    · 1 h 29 min

Where it comes from 1

The archive items its episodes are played from, best first, with each one’s rights as its archive states them. An episode two sets both hold is played from the first.

  1. Luigi Pirandello - Six Characters In Search Of An Author (BBC MP 1959-07-27)

    Listeners' uploads · Luigi Pirandello · 1 episode here · archive.org

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