Teaching Six Characters in Search of an Author in the Age of #MeToo

The 21st-century world of #MeToo may seem far removed from the 1920s-era social landscape of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. Pirandello’s play, in which a family arrives at a theatre mid-rehearsal requesting that the director tell their story, is typically read and studied for its theatrical innovations. Yet alongside these formal pyrotechnics, Pirandello creates a character, the Stepdaughter, whose experience on the stage is achingly familiar to many women. As the play unfolds, the Stepdaughter realizes how the forces of patriarchy exclude the full truth of women’s experiences from the stage. Reading and teaching Six Characters in the wake of #MeToo thus reveals a prescient exploration of the ways in which patriarchal power in the entertainment industry often functions to exploit women’s bodies and silence women’s voices.