Six Characters in Search of an Author · Characters
Character guide
Key figures in Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello.
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The Father
major
Also known as The Father Hurt, The Father Mad, Indicates The Father, The Father Amalia, Amalia, The Father Exactly
He arrives at a rehearsal with six figures in mourning, claiming they were conceived by an author who abandoned them half-born and now demand the stage life they were denied. Alternately unctuous and violent, he argues that characters are more alive than the people who play them, and that his own features, voice, and gestures cannot be faked by a Leading Man. His insistence that the drama is 'in us' forces the Manager to attempt an impossible staging, and his guilt toward the Mother and Step-Daughter quietly fuels the story he is trying to tell.
The Step-Daughter
major
Also known as The Step - Daughter, The Step - Daughter Leaving Madame Pace, Indicates Madame Pace
She bursts into the rehearsal with the Father and the rest, laughing at the Leading Lady cast to play her and refusing to be mixed up in the mess she herself has brought. Yet she is tender with the small Child, rocking her and warning that the stage is all make-believe, a place where painted cardboard stands in for fountains. Her contempt for the timid Boy and her fury at the Father's hypocrisy make her the family's sharpest accuser, and her insistence that the truth be shown exactly as it happened drives the play toward its most dangerous scenes.
The Mother
major
Also known as The Mother Startled
She enters the theatre last, eyes downcast, dressed in modest black under a thick widow's veil, as if bowed by an intolerable weight of shame. Estranged from the Father and divided between the Son who rejects her and the Step-Daughter who accuses her, she speaks little and suffers much, her wax-like face revealing everything the others argue about. When the Manager insists on casting an actress to play her and renaming her Amalia, her passive endurance becomes the still center around which the characters' competing versions of the past collide.
The Son
supporting
Also known as Indicates The Son, The Son Exasperated
He stands apart from the others, supercilious toward the Mother and contemptuous of the Father, looking as though he has come against his will. His shame at the family's public exposure makes him the characters' internal dissenter, resisting the Manager's attempts to assign him a role and rejecting the Step-Daughter's demands that he acknowledge her. His refusal to participate becomes its own kind of statement, exposing how much of the family's tragedy lies not in what happened but in who will not speak of it.
The Manager
major
Also known as Mr. Manager, The Manager Alarmed, The Manager Impatiently
Rudely interrupted during a rehearsal, he first dismisses the intruders as a joke, then grows fascinated despite himself when the Father insists the drama is 'in us' and needs no script. Practical, impatient, and vain about his craft, he casts the parts on the spot, argues that actors—not characters—do the acting, and warns that the whole thing will be a glorious failure. His running battle with the Father over whether reality can survive representation turns a routine rehearsal into a philosophical brawl and gives the play its central comic and tragic engine.
The Actors
supporting
Also known as The Actors
They are the theatre's working body—Leading Man, Leading Lady, Juvenile Lead, and the rest—clearing the stage and listening as the Manager tries to explain what is happening. They laugh when the Father claims characters are alive, take offense when the Step-Daughter says she cannot see herself in the Leading Lady, and demand to know what use they are if the characters will act themselves. Their vanity, professionalism, and growing unease make them the foil against which the six intruders' claim to reality is tested.
The Boy
minor
Also known as The Boy
A silent, troubled child among the six characters.
The Child
minor
Also known as The Child
A young girl among the six characters, often overlooked.
Madame Pace
minor
Also known as Madame Pace
A brothel keeper who appears in a flashback scene with the Step-Daughter.
