Along the lines of Pirandello’s story, the six characters enter the classrooms of secondary schools during a normal lesson, not in search of an author this time, but of followers; someone that confirms and validates their existence, beginning with a like; someone that lends them a story. During the hour that they are given by the professor and company lead, our six characters in search of followers lead teenagers to reflect on the concept of “character”, “story”, “representation”, but above all on the relationship between reality and fiction, between daily life and theatre. Because, in the end, we all encounter theatrics on a daily basis, even if we are unaware, in our social encounters; every time we assume a determined role in school, with our family, with our friends...
And naturally when we use social media; through the photos that we post and the comments that we publish, we are always constructing a caricature of ourselves, a mask, a public image that – as the Sicilian author reminds us – never truly corresponds to our true selves. Thus, involving teenagers in the ruse of “theatre within theatre”, we draw on their personal stories to examine the mechanisms that lie at the foundation of narration; beginning to gradually realise the responsibility that comes with publishing a determined image of ourselves or the reality that surrounds us, and reflecting on the values of truth and falsehood regarding the information that we generate and to which we are exposed. Without forgetting that, along the lines of Pirandello’s theatre, the seriousness of these matters is seen through the filter of humour and irony.