Theater production confronts appearance versus reality

Theater students at Grand Valley will ask audiences to reflect on what they accept as truth in an age when alternative realities are created daily through technology during "Six Characters in Search of an Author."

The production will offer performances April 1, 2, 7, 8, and 9, at 7:30 p.m. and April 3 and 10 at 2 p.m. All shows will take place in Louis Armstrong Theatre located in the Performing Arts Center.

In "Six Characters in Search of an Author," a dysfunctional family of six people, who call themselves "unfinished" dramatic characters created by a playwright, confront a theater director and his entire stage company. The group begs the company to turn their unfinished family drama into a play. As the bizarre situation unfolds, the theater company gradually realizes that these six people may be even more real than themselves.

Roger Ellis, director and professor of theater, said this production presents the "dangerous distinction" between appearance and reality.

"We are so obsessed today with the 'virtual reality' in our lives in the form of mobile devices and movie screens, that virtual reality is more real to us than reality itself," Ellis said.

Ellis added that the themes of this 90-year-old Luigi Pirandello drama raise many questions about the relation between art and life, the limitation of words as communication tools, and the true nature of identity.

Tickets are $12 adults; $10 seniors and GVSU alumni, faculty and staff; $6 students and groups. For more information about "Six Characters," call the Louis Armstrong Box Office at (616) 331-2300 or visit the Theater Department website.