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Six Characters in Search of an Author

By Luigi Pirandello
Adapted by Robert Brustein and
the American Rep Theatre Company

Directed by Betsy R. Delaney
Produced by Jaimee Wurzel

Pirandello's 20th-century masterpiece opens in a bare backstage area where our actors are rehearsing. Six people - who claim to be characters from a play abandoned by their author - make a sudden appearance and seek new life by asking the actors to enact their drama. Pirandello's brilliant exploration of the nature of reality versus illusion, truth versus artifice, and the workings of the creative process is being presented in a newly updated version.

Synopsis

Our acting company is rehearsing a production of Our Town. Their rehearsal is interrupted by a family who explain that they are characters from an unfinished dramatic work and ask permission to reenact a crucial moment in their lives, a moment from which the actors can fashion a finished play.

The actors agree, and the characters tell their story with much bickering and disagreement. No sooner do they begin to reconstruct the scene than tragedy strikes, however, leaving the assembled company to wonder which of the events they are witnessing are real and which are not. Caught in the irreconcilable clash between day-to-day reality and the reality of art, the director of the company bemoans a wasted day.

American Rep Theatre's web site

Six Characters in Search of an Author is presented in cooperation with the Greenbelt Arts Center. The center is located in Old Greenbelt, next to the US Post Office.

Greenbelt Arts Center
123 Centerway
Greenbelt, MD 20770
Directions

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