Pirandello"s masterpiece, "Six Characters in Search of an Author" is well known for its innovative techniques of characterization, especially in the fullness of character as exhibited by the Stepdaughter and the Father, but it is especially renowned, and rightfully so, for the brilliant staging techniques employed by its author. Pirandello uses his innovative staging techniques specifically to symbolize, within the confines of the theater, the blending of the theater and real life. Chief among these, of course, is the way in which the author involves the audience in his production, to the point which, like a medieval audience, they become...
mental institution in Switzerland where his wife was recuperating from a Venetian holiday. The Swiss hospital, renowned for its experimentation, had started a program of gymnastics, meant to boost the patients" self-esteem. The Stepdaughter"s foray above the audience"s heads, during the "intermission," is a direct reflection of that Swiss technique; no one before Pirandello had dared to use it in the theater before, but it not only symbolized neatly the problems with defining reality inherent in the text, but kept the audience from actually getting a rest during the intermission, since they couldn"t tell when it started and began.