Pirandillo's dramatic is to utilize the device of the 'play within the play.' Shakespeare often used this technique, as did many other great playwrights. The device is used to show within the performance of a play, the creation and presentation of another vision of reality. Pirandillo uses this format to raise questions within the audience as to how and where illusion ends and reality begins.
The play's translator, Eric Bentley credits Pirandillo as being the first playwright to actually use the stage as a stage.......... no other location is depicted, there is no other reality, we simply experience the reality of the 'actors' who have no character to play. The stage is empty, there are no props, only the stories of the people on the stage exist. It's been said that this 'stage' and 'vision' reflect a blank sheet of paper........... the stage itself has become the blank sheet of paper on which the writer will write.
Pirandillo has created the dramatic setting, his actors are preparing for rehearsal (one of his own plays) and in enter the 'six.' They have no text, but they have stories to tell. Their purpose is explained by Pirandillo himself in the introduction; "Every creature of fantasy and art, in order to exist, must have his drama, that is, a drama in which he may be a character and for which he is a character. This drama is the character's raison d'etre, his vital function, necessary for his existence."
