Six Characters in Search of an Author

To quote the Manager in this play, “I don’t understand this at all.” Between constantly trying to figure out who was talking and trying to understand if there was, in fact, a plot at all to this play, I barely was able to make it through the whole thing. A great amount of confusion came having to go back and forth reading the character names to figure out who was speaking. There is a group of characters that are the company and they are the “real” actors. Then there is a production team of sorts, which includes the manager and the director. Finally there are the six characters in search of an author, as the title of the play states. The six characters are characters from plays that the authors did not finish. The play seems to consist of the actors attempting to put on a scene, a series of arguments, and finally the death of two characters. At the end of the play the director is left wondering if it was all real or not, and I found myself thinking the same thing when I finished reading it. I understand that this is an absurdist play, but I just found myself completely unable to follow it. I sort of see the point in exploring the relationship between actors, characters, and authors, however the whole play seemed to be lost on me. I also think that perhaps something was lost in the translation from Italian to English, as some of the wording seems odd. I would definitely have to read this play several more times for it to begin to make sense to me.