Six Characters in Search of an Author

The Step-Daughter is a “dashing” and “beautiful” 18-year-old woman (3). She is the daughter of the Mother and the other man, sister to the Boy and the Child, and the half-sister to the Son. While not biologically related to the Father, their positions as archetypes makes their inadvertent sexual relationship feel incestuous and inappropriate.

The Step-Daughter’s name reflects her separation from the family and others. She blames the Son for rejecting her family, and she struggles to understand the Mother’s desire for reconciliation. Her driving emotion is revenge. Her goal in telling the story of the Father is “to shame him and have [her] revenge” (30).

The Step-Daughter approaches the play as a site for spectacle and emotion. In contrast to the Father’s intellectual philosophizing, she favors dramatic re-enactments of her trauma. Her approach to theater and authorship positions truth as accuracy. She pushes for factual accuracy in the set dressing. She demands the drama include accurate dialogue. When speaking with Madame Pace, she ignores the theatrical conventions regarding volume and whispers onstage. She wants to include all the events of their interactions, even the undressing that scandalizes the Manager and breaks theatrical conventions. As the author, the Step-Daughter centers her trauma and desire for revenge.

The Manager represents the ideas of conventional theater and traditional authorship. As the manager of the company, he controls the flow of rehearsal and gives direction. His ideas about theater are traditional: He bristles at the absurdity of playwrights like Luigi Pirandello and at the Father’s arguments about characters and theater. He initially hesitates even to author their drama because of his views on theater. Once he does agree, he tries to shape their drama into a traditional piece of theater. He modifies one of the Father’s lines to meet standards of decorum. He attempts to create a linear drama but grows frustrated with the nonlinear nature of the characters’ retelling. When trying to stage the ending, he creates a singular setting because of conventions about set changes. Even in the end, the Manager is more concerned with the loss of a rehearsal day than anything else.

His expectations and conventions are consistently challenged. The Step-Daughter and the Father constantly interrupt scenes and question his choices. The Son refuses to participate. The characters’ play even runs out of control when the drama escapes the conventions of rehearsal to become a chaotic experience.

In contrast to the other speaking characters, the Mother does not realize that she is a character. Instead, she lives in what the Father calls the eternal moment. All the tragedies are “taking place now” and “all the time” (39). Her emotions are not pretend, and she “live[s] and feel[s] every minute” of it (39). She lives each moment as it is being staged, including discovering her dead children. In contrast to the other characters, she typically only expresses emotions, rather than sharing her point of view. Her emotions are often extreme. She often faints or sobs. When she sees Madame Pace, the Mother even tries to violently confront her.

The Mother is closely aligned with and represents grief. Her face is “wax-like,” and she “always keeps her eyes downcast” (3). She wears “modest black” mourning clothes and a “thick widow’s veil” because she is mourning the death of her second husband (3). In addition, she mourns her estrangement from the Son. The Mother ends the plays “with a cry of terror” and calls for help (52).