John Middleton as “The Father” in Alan Berks & Co.’s “Six Characters in Search of an Author.” Photo courtesy of Alan Berks.

“Six Characters in Search of an Author,” playwright Alan Berks’ new adaptation of the Luigi Pirandello’s classic 1921 meta-theatrical “comedy in the making,” opens in a television editing room, mid-season of a hit reality show.  Three competitors-cum-housemates remain in a series called “The Maze;” they’re living in a mansion, completing “challenges” set by the show’s producers and, all the while, vying with one another to find a set of golden keys hidden away in one of the house’s many rooms, worth a large cash prize.

As with most TV shows of this ilk – “Big Brother,” “Survivor,” and the like – the supposedly ordinary folks pitted against one another fall into easily typecast roles: a manipulative coquette (“The Flirt”), a gangsta with a dark past looking to make good (“The Dude”), a universally despised, drunken boor (“The Asshole”). And the cocksure producer of “The Maze” plays to type with the rest of them — a craven sellout whose empty bloviating about making a new, realer-than-real sort of cinema verité fools no one. A work-a-day Teamster-type is “The Technician:” as the man behind the camera, he’s the show’s real auteur, and a relative cipher – the only one of the bunch whose persona isn’t plainly defined from the outset.

Out of nowhere, during a typical day of shooting, “The Maze” set is quietly overrun by the titular six characters in search of an author. The six comprise a strangely anachronistic and benighted family, entangled in terrible betrayals and secrets; it turns out they’ve been wandering, unmoored, for a century, fictional characters locked in a kind of literary purgatory, bereft because their original author filed them away mid-narrative, dying before he could finish their tale. They’ve been wandering through others’ stories, eternally in media res, looking for someone to complete their melodrama and free them from the confines of their as-yet-unresolved family tragedy.

Three of the titual “Six Characters,” on stage at Gremlin Theatre through March 24. Photo courtesy of Alan Berks.

The quasi-fictions of the reality show and the interloping drama blur and co-mingle. When the television producer decides to option the strangers’ story, the “Kafka Family Players” enact the details of their plot thus far for “The Maze” cast and crew. The family’s scenes are then played for the television camera by the reality show’s original cast members. The plot thickens and twists; characters overlap and merge as dire truths are revealed in the shades’ unfolding storyline, while the camera follows every move. But the absurd, increasingly surreal tangle of narratives – depicted on stage and multiple screens — is almost beside the point.

Berks’ retelling of Pirandello’s satire aims to skewer the role-playing we all engage in: the guile that lurks behind every humble-brag status update and self-consciously insouciant tweet. And the overwrought “actoring” on stage never once lets you forget you’re watching a play, colluding in the fiction.

“Six Characters in Search of an Author” is an occasionally ham-fisted but thinky, ambitious production; it’s thoughtful and carefully executed – it’s also over-the-top, but that’s fitting, given the subject matter. If you’re itching for a cerebral exploration of personal identity, artifice and “real” drama, authenticity and the authorship of a life – this play’s for you.

Luigi Pirandello’s “Six Characters in Search of an Author” has been adapted and directed by Alan Berks; the cast features: John Middleton, Sam Landman , Max Wojtanowicz, Rachel Finch, Michael Terrell Brown, Joe Wiener, Bryan Porter, Colleen Barrett, Dana Lee Thompson, and ShaVunda Horsley. The play is on stage through March 24 at Gremlin Theatre, 2400 University Avenue West, St. Paul. Find more information on the show’s Facebook event listing or the Gremlin Theatre website: http://www.gremlin-theatre.org/index.html