I may/may not have mentioned that my psychology lecture is given in the largest theatre at my university, but it does. This theatre also happens to be a literal theatre, and so I see posters for events on a regular basis. There were advertisements for a play called Six Characters in Search of an Author, which is an interesting name, and the poster had people in dark clothing and white makeup looking dramatic so I figured it would be interesting. I didn’t want to go by myself, but had no one to invite really, except for my brother - and so we went tonight, to the last showing.

        There were… a couple dozen people there. Kinda disappointing :/ I’m not sure how to describe the play. It turns out it’s eighty years old and it has a wikipedia article, which describes it as “a satirical tragicomedy,” “part of a movement in the early 20th century called theatricalism or anti-illusionism,” which means it’s like a play concentrated. The best analogy I can give is to “true” avant-garde music, the kind that stops being pleasant to listen to. It’s a great mental exercise to write and discuss, but not all that great to experience.

        This is a great story, and you’re going to love it, so I’m glad I wasted two hours there. First of all, the play is about a play, and so when the actors in the play take a twenty minute break, you, the audience, sit there for twenty minutes. It’s not really an intermission. There just isn’t anything interesting happening. Two actors get on stage and improv a silly argument, but that’s it. There’s another ten minute breaking, so a quarter of your two hour experience is you twiddling your thumbs.

        The basic premise is that these characters have been abandoned by their author and need a new one, and want the director (character in the play) to write their play for them. But they won’t allow themselves to be played by actors because then it isn’t truly their story, it’s the actors’ interpretations of their story, and they insist that they as characters are more real and alive than human beings because at least they’re well-defined.

        But two of the six are dead (this isn’t a spoiler - in my case, they were dolls, rather than actors, so) and the rest are varying degrees of crazy, so you get insane screaming and outbursts and things like that, complete with unpleasant background music. The story of the characters is revealed bit by bit, so you’re always interested (except during the “breaks”) but at the same time it’s very unexciting and weirdly unsatisfying to experience. It’s like if I tried to tell you my life’s story, but half of it was cut out in transmission. You just want more from it.

        That being said, the wikipedia article has a link to the text, and mentions two film adaptations. I’d be interested in seeing how they handled it as a film - as a play, it’s limited in what it can portray, but editing magic could make it great. Check those out if you’re interested.