Art Beyond the Mainstream

A century after its 1921 premiere, Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author remains a benchmark for theatrical innovation, a seminal work that encourages playwrights to question the theater’s conventions and possibilities and to expand the boundaries of dramatic expression.

It revolutionized the way that dramatists thought about character, storytelling and the very nature of the theatergoing experience, making it a cornerstone of modern and postmodern theater.

Its influence can be seen in plays by Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Tom Stoppard and countless others. Its legacies include later playwrights’ embrace of metatheater, with characters who are aware of their fictional nature; of nonlinear storytelling, which features fragmented, disjointed sequences of events that jump backward and forward in time; and of the use of theater as an arena for profound philosophical inquiry.

More than that, Pirandello’s play is one of the earliest and most influential dramatic works to depict family dysfunction and psychological, emotional and sexual abuse. At its core, the play examines the psychological and emotional wreckage left by a family torn apart by betrayal, unresolved trauma and personal moral failings.

The family in Six Characters is fundamentally fractured. The husband and wife are estranged and their children are caught in the crossfire of their parents’ unresolved conflicts. Communication has broken down and emotional connections between the family members have been severed.

The husband is the cause of the family’s breakdown. In a crucial incident, he encountered his stepdaughter at a brothel, where she had been forced to work out of financial desperation. Just before anything sexually explicit happens, he recognized her identity, but the damage had been done.

In the stepdaughter’s eyes, this near-incestuous encounter reveals the stepfather as a sexual predator who exploits women, deceives his wife and violates his paternal role. Deeply traumatized, she views this incident as the ultimate betrayal by the man who should have protected and supported her. Her feelings of anger, shame and desire for retribution color her interactions throughout the play.

Meanwhile, the father, overwhelmed with guilt and shame, is unable to fully confront what has occurred. Instead, he repeatedly tries to explain and rationalize his behavior. His guilt precludes any possibility of reconciliation or healing, trapping the characters in a cycle of suffering and blame.

The play also underscores the collateral damage and trauma caused by a family’s toxic environment. Pirandello lays bare the mother’s grief-stricken passivity, the stepdaughter’s vengeful anger and the son’s emotional detachment.

The family’s youngest child, a daughter, dies by drowning. While this incident is depicted as an accident, it symbolizes the family’s inability to protect its most vulnerable members. Meanwhile, the girl’s older brother commits suicide, reflecting the profound despair and hopelessness that permeate the family and the deep emotional and psychological scars left by the family’s troubled past and its inability to escape the burden of guilt and sorrow.

These events expose the psychological damage caused by abusive family relationships, whether these involve emotional neglect, detachment, manipulation or cruelty. The characters are trapped in their suffering, unable to escape the family’s dysfunction and incapable of resolving their pain or achieving catharsis or closure.

The play suggests that abuse within a family can become a self-perpetuating cycle, where the effects of one generation’s actions spill over into the next. The father’s actions set off a chain of events that lead to the suffering of all the characters. With its unflinching portrayal of a family torn apart by betrayal, guilt, moral failure and trauma, the play addressed issues that were not discussed openly in society or art.

Pirandello’s play focuses on six characters who interrupt a theatrical rehearsal, claiming that the playwright had left their stories unfinished. They demand that their stories be told in full and brought to life on the stage.

Among the earliest and most influential examples of metatheater, the play self-consciously addresses the artificial nature of theater and the ambiguous boundary between fiction and reality. By blurring the lines between the world of the characters, the actors and the playwright, Pirandello challenged traditional notions of narrative structure and paved the way for more experimental forms of storytelling in theater.

The play raises profound questions about the playwright’s authorial role. By depicting characters who challenge their creator and seek to take control of their own narrative, the play questions the nature of authorship, the authority of the playwright and the relationship between creator and creation. It explores the idea that characters and stories can have a life of their own, independent of the author’s intentions and that the playwright’s role is more complex and less authoritative than traditionally conceived.

The play’s six characters appear as fully formed individuals who insist that they have their own stories, independent of the playwright’s control. The characters in the play demand to have their story told in their own way, suggesting that once a character is created, they can take on a life of their own, beyond the author’s intentions.

The play raises the question of whether a playwright truly “owns” their characters or if, once created, characters possess a certain autonomy that limits the playwright’s control. The characters insist that they are not simply tools for the playwright to manipulate. The play also questions whether any work of art is ever truly complete or if it is always subject to revision or reinterpretation by others.

The play suggests that the playwright’s original intentions are not the definitive guide to understanding a story or its characters. The characters in the play have their own perceptions of their story, which may differ from what an author might have intended. The play challenges the idea that the playwright is the ultimate authority on the meaning or direction of the narrative.

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I recently had the opportunity to see a new play that self-consciously grapples with the issues raised by Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. Entitled Six Characters, the play is by Phillip Howze, a lecturer on theater, dance and media at Harvard University and resident writer at Lincoln Center Theater. Howze’s theatrical works, such as Frontieres Sans Frontieres and Self Portraits, explore themes related to identity, social justice and the human condition and address the intersections of race, culture, politics and personal experience, using innovative narrative structures and theatrical techniques.

Howze is particularly interested in how individuals perceive themselves and are perceived by others and the internal conflicts that arise from living in a society in which popular media imposes certain racialized and gendered expectations and stereotypes. His plays also challenge audiences to confront uncomfortable truths about power, privilege and how societal structures reinforce racial and social hierarchies, prompting audiences to reflect on their own roles within these systems.

Like Pirandello, Howze incorporates surreal or absurd elements into his plays, using these techniques to challenge conventional storytelling and to explore deeper psychological and existential themes.

Highly ambitious, Howze’s Six Characters is also slow paced, long-winded and confusing, lacking any coherent plot or story line. As critics observe, the play “break[s] narrative and character conventions” and is “overloaded with too many abstract ideas.” Still, it’s a stimulating and provocative work that deserves to be taken seriously.

I think most audience members were surprised by how openly the play discusses and questions Aristotle’s ideas about drama laid out in his Poetics, which have profoundly influenced Western theater. Aristotle identifies six essential elements in a dramatic tragedy: plot, character, thought, diction, melody and spectacle, with plot being the most important. In Aristotle’s eyes, all actions in a tragedy need to be causally connected and contribute to a coherent whole, with the objective of producing catharsis in the audience, an emotional cleansing that leads to a heightened understanding of human nature, human emotions and the human condition.

Howze’s work is anything but Aristotelian. It is not clearly structured, nor does it seek to prompt catharsis. Its six characters—a Black director who calls for theaters to provide a platform for Black playwrights and actors, a custodian, a student playing hooky, a theatergoer, the theatergoer’s former lover, and a fugitive slave—breakdance, wield a knife and a sword, drum, spin a basketball, deliver (in Italian) a speech by Mussolini, philosophize, and take part in fraught, intensely emotional two-person interactions.

As the theater critic, dramaturge and off-Broadway producer Loren Noveck observes, as in Pirandello’s play, Howze’s characters “are bound to their tragic story, yet can’t find the author, director, and actors who will represent it in a way they recognize, who won’t use facile conventions as shortcuts.”

The play also wages a dramatic attack Aristotle’s views about women, ethnicity and race, especially his argument for the existence of natural slaves, which Howze suggests are deeply woven into Western culture.

In his Politics, Aristotle argued that women possess rationality, but to a lesser degree than men. He claimed that while men have the capacity for reason and leadership, women’s rationality is more passive, making them less capable of governance and decision-making.

Aristotle’s Politics also introduces the notion that some individuals possess a natural aptitude for governance and leadership, while others are naturally predisposed to be governed and to perform menial tasks—justifying slavery by claiming that it is beneficial for both the master and the slave.

Among the play’s many themes is the need for a new form of emancipation: to invade the cultural institutions that failed to accurately represent the Black experience; to break free from the destructive impact of Western imperialism and white nationalism that “props up the arts”; to burn to the ground the theatrical and critical power structures that have marginalized Black playwrights, actors and audiences; and to resist the allure of a seductive fascism.

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When I was an undergraduate and campus film series were a familiar component of student life, my classmates and I regularly saw challenging films like Alain Resnais’s 1961 French New Wave classic Last Year at Marienbad. Enigmatic and surreal, this film—where a man tries to persuade a woman that they had a romantic encounter the previous year—was the French entry for the Academy Awards’ best foreign language film but was also included in the 1978 book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time and called pretentious and perplexing.

With its disjointed, nonlinear structure; repeated dialogue; and ambiguous visuals, the film blurs the lines between memory and imagination, reality and fantasy.

Whether you liked the film or loathed it, watching Last Year at Marienbad offered us a unique opportunity to challenge and refine our sensibilities and to engage with stylistic innovations and cinematic approaches that stood in stark contrast to the Hollywood mainstream.

Unlike conventional Hollywood films, which often follow clear narratives and provide easily accessible entertainment, Last Year at Marienbad requires the viewer’s active engagement. The film’s fragmented, nonlinear narrative and ambiguous dialogue force the audience to interpret the story for themselves and appreciate subtleties and complexities that might go unnoticed in more straightforward films.

The film’s deliberate ambiguity and refusal to provide clear answers encouraged the audience to embrace uncertainty and to explore multiple interpretations. This led to a deeper understanding of how meaning can be constructed and deconstructed in art and helped us appreciate more abstract and avant-garde works across different mediums.

The film’s nonlinear storytelling, repetition of scenes and ambiguous timeline challenge the conventional Hollywood approach, which typically favors a clear beginning, middle and end. By experiencing this, we learned about alternative ways to structure a narrative and gained insights into how different techniques can evoke various emotions and thoughts.

The film’s visual style represents a significant departure from mainstream cinema. Its use of long tracking shots, static compositions and meticulously composed frames that emphasize atmosphere and mood over plot taught us to appreciate the power of visual storytelling. The film’s attention to the geometric precision of its set design and the haunting quality of its imagery also demonstrates how cinematography can be used to create a dreamlike, almost surreal experience.

Last Year at Marienbad is a prime example of how cinema can explore complex themes like memory, time and identity in ways that are rarely addressed in mainstream films. The film blurs the lines between past, present and future and between reality and imagination, inviting viewers to contemplate the fluidity of these concepts. This philosophical exploration is a stark contrast to the often linear and goal-oriented narratives of Hollywood.

In addition, the film subverts many of the expectations that viewers might have from a typical movie. There is no clear resolution, the characters remain enigmatic and the plot is intentionally vague. By challenging these expectations, Last Year at Marienbad broadened our understanding of what cinema can be, encouraging an appreciation for films that prioritize mood, tone and psychological depth over conventional storytelling.

Now that campus film series have largely disappeared, what can colleges do to broaden students’ artistic horizons; help them engage with art on a deeper, more intellectual level; refine their sensibilities; push them to confront and interpret ambiguity and complexity; and expose them to innovative stylistic techniques and narrative approaches that exist outside the Hollywood movie and television mainstream? Here are some ideas.

1. Offer more courses on specific artistic themes and movements like The Art of the Surreal and Global Cinema to expose students to a diverse array of films that challenge mainstream conventions and encourage critical analysis.
2. Create interdisciplinary film, art and philosophy seminars that combine art and cinema with philosophy and cultural studies to help students engage with films on a deeper intellectual level.
3. Support student-led film clubs that regularly screen independent, international or avant-garde films that bring in faculty and guest speakers to provide context and analysis.
4. Establish regular discussion groups where specific films and artist exhibits are discussed as a group and moderated by faculty or other experts, helping to guide interpretations and highlight innovative stylistic techniques.
5. Collaborate with local museums and theaters ask their curators or in-house experts to lead discussions in either virtual or face-to-face formats that focus on avant-garde, emerging and experimental works and genres that are underrepresented in mainstream cinema, theater or museum exhibitions.
6. Showcase student works that push the boundaries of conventional storytelling and artistic representation.
7. Encourage faculty in departments across the curriculum to incorporate avant-garde artworks and films into their courses as a way to explore themes relevant to their discipline, whether in history, literature, psychology or sociology.
8. Host interdisciplinary exhibitions that include cutting-edge visual art, performance and film to help students see the connections between different art forms and understand the forms that creative innovation is taking.

Our campuses don’t do enough to expose our students to the avant-garde—to works that push the envelope, break the mold and challenge norms and conventions. If we are to foster an environment that values innovation, risk-taking and creative experimentation, we need to expose students to cutting-edge art forms.

The value of innovative and non-mainstream art in education lies in its ability to disrupt traditional narratives, push students to confront ambiguity, question assumptions and develop a heightened sensitivity to artistic expression.

Exposing students to cutting-edge theatrical, cinematic and artistic works is essential if we are to encourage deeper engagement with complex and unconventional ideas and prepare them to navigate a rapidly changing cultural landscape. Engaging with experimental and avant-garde art empowers students to move beyond passive consumption and toward active interpretation, refining their critical faculties and enhancing their appreciation of diverse forms of artistic expression.

There’s a quotation widely attributed to William Faulkner: “You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” Venturing into the unknown and exploring new ideas is essential for creativity. Only by exposing students to the avant-garde can we encourage them to think beyond traditional, the conventional and the predictable.