Six Characters in Search of an Author: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Six Characters in Search of an Author, credited to Luigi Pirandello, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Six Characters in Search of an Author, by Luigi Pirandello, translated by Edward Storer. Six Characters in Search of an Author (Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore) is the most famous and celebrated play by the Italian writer Luigi Pirandello. Pirandello, in the preface to the play, says that whenever a reader opens Dante’s Inferno, Francesca will drift down from the dark wind in her circle of Hell and tell the Pilgrim her story; and it will always be for the first time – just as the Mother in Pirandello’s play at one point makes an agonizing cry, always for the first time. Each character sees events and the other characters differently. Their readings of reality do not match up. No one character is more correct than the other. There are as many versions of the story as there are characters in the play. Each character is in fact many characters; each has a sense of who he or she is, but each also is what the others believe he or she is. The play suggests that we are more victims of forces we cannot control than captains of our own fate and demonstrates Pirandello's conception that in place of a continuous ego, self or "I" are states of mind, masks or personae; the temporary result of forces brought to bear on us at that moment. The self becomes an anthology of such roles or masks. Theatricalists thought life was more like theater than vice versa. As in theater, we put on and take off masks, try out various roles, and make up our lives as we go along. (Summary by Wikipedia) CAST: The Narrator: Elizabeth Klett The Father: Peter Yearsley The Mother: Ruth Golding The Step-Daughter: Miss Avarice The Son: mb Madame Pace: Diana Majlinger The Manager: Denny Sayers The Property Man: David Lawrence The Prompter: om123 The Door-Keeper: gobblegobble The Machinist: Ezwa The Leading Lady: Piper Hale The Leading Man: bish L'Ingénue: Bridget Tallon Juvenile Lead: LizMourant Actors: Miriam Esther Goldman, Availle, Lucy Perry, Sweetlilbirdy, Kalynda

Recording facts

• Recording title: Six Characters in Search of an Author
• Author credits: Luigi Pirandello
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 3
• Listed recording duration: 2:08:59

Catalogue topics

• drama
• play
• theater
• theatre
• Italy

Track guide

1. 1 - Act 1 — 52:30
2. 2 - Act 2 — 45:33
3. 3 - Act 3 — 30:57

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.