A theatrical show entitled “Six Characters in Search of an Author” succeeded to address the problems of the human inner-self. Through this work, author Luigi Pirandello sought to prove that art is capable of bringing about change into the constants, because it is the most present and permanent of real life itself. This play discusses the duality produced by social customs. The show came as a psycho-analysis drama performed at the drama theater in Katara as part of the competition “Our Youth on Stage” held at the Doha Theatre Festival. The play’s stars are Ibrahim Mabrouk, Abdul Rahman al-Mansouri, Issa al-Khuzai, Kaltham al-Mannai, Ali Hussein, Lulua al-Nasr, Rashid al-Abd al-Rahman, Juma al-Ahmad, and Amal Bou Shahri. Mr. Ibrahim Lari is the director of this work.
This theatrical performance by young actors from the Community College of Qatar sought to have the formal revolution within that Pirandello wanted through his text, but the director of the show added his prints that gave the work a special nature and made it different from the original text; so that the play fits the nature of the Qatari society. The play tells the story of a theatre team producing a new work until their retreat breaks into a group of theatrical characters seeking an author, to propose a set of works to represent them, and here it is proposed to present works from the Qatari theater as: Bo Dreyah, Helo Gulf, Wadi Al-Magadir, and other works that can enable them prove themselves and immortalize their creativity. The play may seem without a story woven events, as it is nothing more than scenes created by the director of the work instead of scenes that have been deleted from the original play, but it still carries many dimensions that touch our empty reality through a set of projections that represent the problems and challenges of society, especially within the youth category of people.
We can say that director Larri relied on the spirit of the play and not on the way in which Pirandello wrote his play. He emphasized the state of alienation that the original author intended through the play text, but in other ways such as physical expression and dealing with the theatrical void through the body of the actor and the suggestive forms of the content without focusing on the vocabulary of the original text. This made the work closer to an authored text that can be said to be taken from “Six Characters in Search of an Author” and not just a treatment for it. He even added the art of “Nahma” (sailors singing) to this theatrical form. Therefore, who previously knows the original play will undoubtedly be exposed to a lot of confusion because he can only link them through the idea of alienation on which the two versions relied; along with the performance embodied in the search of the characters for an author to formulate ideas that express each of them separately. Besides, in director Lari’s play, the focus is higher on the presentation of many issues that he considers more important to be addressed.
As for the décor, it included a set of cubes that the director wanted to dominate the cinematography of the show directly. The theater, therefore, appears crowded with structural blocks that express the spatial value of the work and the crowded ideas in the minds of its characters. Out of the center of these cubes, on the other hand, some characters appear talking on their own affairs. However, despite the change of scenes and speeches the characters present, the cubes remain the same except for some of the few easy-to-move pieces of decoration that help them express. This is due to the fact that the show has the same nature of the text, which depends on abstraction to stress that we are receiving a psycho-analysis drama that occurs all within the minds of the characters of the play, but we watch it only to see closely what is in their minds. The director also resorted to embodying ideas staged through the fragmentation of the characters with the multiplicity of Qatari drama works presented, which helped to confirm the deliberate abstraction in the play itself. In general, the performance of the actors reflected fully their outstanding ability, using the agility of performance and the attempt to better the theatrical look in place. We also cannot fail to mention the excellent lighting works that helped greatly to convey the message to be said in the play in the same line as the dramatic context did and what the show implies, i.e., the most prominent of the confusion factors is the smoke damaging the vision.
Finally, it must be noted that Pirandello’s writings are always characterized by the fact that they do not rely on the usual mechanical structure. So, it seems to those who are accustomed to the drama characterized by the traditional beginning and complex events with a satisfactory conclusion, that this type of drama does not have a story! Yet, its approach always tends to be full of integrity and simple by seeing basic and general human things, including joy and sadness in an easy manner. Such drama, indeed, is far from unnecessary classical norms. It is also characterized with ambiguity and climax at the beginning and the end, where the warmth of life deeply lies within the characters themselves.