On the Rocks interview: 6 Questions in Search of an Answer

 “6 Characters in Search of an Author” is a play adapted from the Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello’s “Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore” and is going up during On the Rocks next week. Peter Swallow asks the director Joseph Cunningham and his cast a few questions.

What’s the play about and how is your version different from Pirandello’s original script?

Joe: I’m going to hold my cards pretty close to my chest on this one. It’s difficult to explain the plot without spoilers. But the show is essentially about theatre. We start with a production team who are attempting to rehearse a dubious show about euthanasia while simultaneously attempting to deal with problems such as a temperamental lead and having to use Venue 1 (after all, the Byre went bankrupt…). Their rehearsals are swiftly hijacked by a family of Characters who coerce the team into staging their story. What begins as farce spirals into horror, and the Characters’ story takes on a life of its own.

Pirandello’s original holds little significance for the modern age: it is firmly locked into the conventions of 1920s Italian theatre. I have attempted to modernise the show to make it relevant to our theatre and there are some sub-plotlines that are not present in the original. Puritans will barely recognise the dialogue – it’s not the world’s most faithful translation.

By the sounds of it, the play will be very “meta”. Should we bring our brains when we come and see it?

Joe: Absolutely! It’s certainly a show you don’t want to watch while drunk. Six Characters arguably initiated the movement that we now understand to be meta-theatre in the modern sense, and I have borrowed and adapted a new act originally by Rupert Goold and Ben Power that adds an extra 10 minutes and several layers of reality to the show. It’s mind-bending stuff that takes Pirandello’s ideas to their logical extreme.

Charlotte: It’s as meta as Inception, with all the mind-fuck of Donnie Darko.

This isn’t your first adaptation. Last year, you wrote 1.9.8.4. Do adaptations particularly appeal to you?

Joe: They do indeed. I always enjoy seeing new spins on old stories – slavish, academic reconstructions can get incredibly tedious… I also enjoy it for selfish reasons: it gives me an excuse to impose my own aesthetics and vision onto a story and present what I think it should be to an audience. There are some more adaptations in the pipeline…

Is it true you make your actors do push-ups if they’re late to rehearsals?

Joe: No comment.

Now, to turn to the actors. Tell us a little about the character you play.

Charlotte: I play the director. Although the director is a realistic character, the situation is surreal; she is caught where worlds collide.

Laura: I play the stage manager, who’s she’s very much the voice of pragmatism in amongst the madness. She’s cynical and completely fed up with actors and all their affectations. As far as she’s concerned, the whole ‘character’ aspect of the play is complete rubbish.

Peter: Short answer? He’s a right dickhead. The producer is a self-centred, smarmy little man who inhabits the naturalistic world of the production team. He is crass and unlikable, an egotist who reeks of cheap aftershave and brylcreem.

Why should we come and see Six Characters in Search of an Author?

Joe: It’s quite unlike anything we have seen in St Andrews before. It’s challenging, shocking, and – love it or hate it – you’ll certainly leave shaken with some strong opinions on it. For better or for worse, Six Characters will be burnt into your mind for years to come.

Catriona: One word – meta-theatre.

Six Characters goes up as part of On the Rocks in Venue 1 on Wednesday & Thursday, April 10^th and 11^th, at 7pm.