Dark comedy, six characters, a play rehearsal and about 30 Ouachitonians. The common link? Luigi Pirandello’s “Six Characters in Search of an Author.”
“You find yourself laughing at one moment then going ‘ooooh’ at another,” said Daniel Inouye, assistant professor of theatre arts and the play’s director. “It’s fascinating.”
The basic premise is that six characters interrupt a live rehearsal and beg those actors to portray their story instead, as their author refuses to write their story out.
According to Inouye, the actors are actually playing themselves on stage, because they are actors in a rehearsal.
“It’s reality versus illusion and what is real or not real,” Inouye said.
The play was chosen to provide a “challenge for the students,” Inouye said. “The goal is to provide the students with as many aspects of types [of theatre] as possible.”
“It is unlike anything that I have been in before, stucture and content-wise,” said Jody Lee, a senior musical theatre major who plays the role of Father.
According to Lee, the father is “very intellectual. He justifies his actions through logic and feels he has done everything for the good of his family.”
The play may contain more mature content than previous plays done by the theater department.
“It deals with darker, more mature themes,” Inouye said. “[The audience] needs to be aware of the subject matter.”
Katie Willhite, a junior Christian studies and theatre double major, plays the role of the Stepdaughter. “[I play] an 18-year-old girl who has been forced into prostitution as a way to support her family.”
“It’s a very bold piece,” Willhite said. “It challenges both the people involved and the audience to listen to these characters’ stories and live life with them.”
Lee said it is “hard to walk away from rehearsals and not take it [the suffering of the characters] with you sometimes.”
Willhite has also struggled with the challenge of the play and portraying the Stepdaughter and even considered saying no because of the nature of her part.
“I spent many days wrestling with whether or not this was where God wanted me,” Willhite said. “It was an amazing opportunity but was it the right [one]?”
Willhite decided after Refuge one evening that God was telling her to take the role. “It doesn’t make sense to me, but I have complete peace about [it] and can now see His hand in the whole process.”
The play will take place over Halloween weekend, and one of the reasons the department chose it was to “tie into the eerie feel of that weekend,” Inouye said.
Despite the subject matter, Willhite said they are enjoying the chance to work with the other cast members to portray a deeper story that could easily be overlooked.
“Six Characters in Search of an Author” will take place Oct. 29-31 and Nov. 2 at 7:30 p.m. and Nov. 1 at 2:30 p.m. New Ouachita policy provides current students with one free ticket with presentation of their student ID. Tickets are $6 to the general public.
