First Impressions

My first impressions of 'Six Characters in Search of an Author,' is that it is a play about a group of actors putting on a play; if you did this piece, you would essentially be putting on a play about putting on a play. On first reading it I can't quite grasp what the play is about and I think I would need to read the previous scenes to understand what events led the characters to be in the current situation.

There is a lot of punctuation in the piece which indicates that there is a lot of ideas in one monologue. We know from the stage directions that the Stepdaughter 'has burst out laughing,' suggesting that she has been keeping a lot of her thoughts to herself until this moment and therefore all the punctuation is included because the Stepdaughter is going on a rant and proclaiming everything that has been building up from the previous scenes. Even if the monologue was in a different language we would know the monologue had a lot of emotion contained in one speech because of all the punctuation.

There are also a lot of stage directions. This would indicate that the director/author has a very precise vision of what he wants the play to be. However this doesn't mean if you took the play and directed it yourself that you couldn't ignore or change some of the stage directions to fit your vision of the piece.