Six Characters in Search of an Author
Opening Night: October 28, 2014
Closing: November 2, 2014
Theater: BAM Harvey Theater
An identity crisis for the theater itself, Luigi Pirandello’s 1921 epitome of absurdism is a masterpiece of blurred dramatic lines, brought cleverly to life in this production from director Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota and Théâtre de la Ville, Paris. A dysfunctional family of six interrupts the rehearsal of a play to make a curious claim: They are characters who’ve been abandoned by their author and are seeking a theater troupe to give them an artful sense of completion. On a spare set, portrayers and portrayed begin to overlap, as fiction and reality follow suit. The result is a beguiling tragedy that turns notions of authorship and agency on their heads while offering humanity critical insight into its own selectively scribed existence.
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October 30, 2014
Huddled like refugees from another time and place, a family appears in the theater clad in mourning black, an orphaned band of dramatis personae. They have interrupted the rehearsal of a play, but the piece isn’t much to speak of. “France won’t send us any good plays,” complains the director, a commanding and elegant man who surely deserves better. “We are reduced to staging works by Pirandello. To those who understand them, bravo.” Well, good news: The director, his ensemble and the strange new arrivals are all trapped inside Luigi Pirandello’s “Six Characters in Search of an Author,” and comprehending it is no problem in Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota’s lucid, fast-moving, shadow-filled production at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The Paris company Théâtre de la Ville, last seen at the academy two years ago in Mr. Demarcy-Mota’s staging of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, is back at the Next Wave Festival.
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