Concrete Playground

When Luigi Pirandello's Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore premiered in Rome in 1921, the play introduced the idea that fictional characters could exist beyond their creator, lost out in the world as orphans craving attention. But if there's anything that reality television has taught us, it's that many real people want to take part in a story bigger than their daily life. Even flesh and blood needs an author, so it seems.

Rupert Goold, artistic director of the British company, Headlong, has re-imagined Pirandello's tragicomedy for a world besotted with the media. As the title suggests, six people interrupt the filming of a docu-drama and claim that they are fictional characters seeking an author. So, of course, someone with a handy camera decides that the only solution is to record it all for the world to see.

By Jimmy Dalton