In Six Characters in Search of an Author Pirandello illustrates the point that in art there is no one reality, only perceptions. Art is one perception held by the one artist, in the case of the play, the author, who brings this perception to an audience. To animate this principal Pirandello uses many staging approaches and techniques to merge art and theater, into real life, while highlighting the shortcomings of drama/art in imitating life. I noted three such techniques while reading this play: the lines spoken by the "interesting" characters, the play structure pertaining to acts and scenes, and the play directions within the play.
             To illustrate this first point we take notice of the lines the "most interesting characters" speak in the first few pages of the play. In this section these characters are pleading with the manager to take an interest in their story. However during their plea these characters fight amongst themselves, arguing their own perspective on the "drama" they "carry within" themselves. The father, who begins to tell the story of their "drama", is interrupted countless times by the mother, the stepdaughter, and the son. These characters argue about the lifting of the mother's mourning veil, about who instigated the split between the father and mother, and other such details, until the father asks the manager to exercise his authority, and allow him to speak uninterrupted. Real life is not always free from interruptions and conflicts, Pirandello writes dialogue that would be more commonly used in everyday conversations. As the father describes "the whole trouble lies here...in words...I put in the words I utter the sense and the value of things as I see them...each man of us his own special world." (Pirandello 516) Each character interprets their "drama within" differently, and as imperfect as that is, that is life, which art struggles to duplicate.
             Rejecting the conventional framework of a typical p...