Reality?

Hey it's Erin. I'm not going to lie - the more I think about how the characters are more real, truer, than the actors, I get confused. How can something that's created be more real than reality? Is what Pirandello's saying true for everyone, or just for actors (because I could understand that a little better because an actor is always portraying someone else that they are not, and always portraying different people)?

The father says, "we have no reality outside of this illusion" and I was thinking, "wait, reality and illusion are opposites." What does that mean, that because they have no other reality, then what they have now is reality? Is it just an illusion because they're characters, an illusion like acting? But what the father says to the director ("don't you think that tomorrow... what you are feeling now as well, your reality for today... might also seem an illusion?") made me think about a theory mentioned in the E-prime article and in "The New Doublespeak". The Sapir-Whorf theory says that language affects our view of the world, of reality. It is a guide to social reality. William Lutz, author of the book, says that language reflects a person's reality as they see it. The way the characters talk and interact reveal their view of things, their reality. And it is so much clear to see in the play because the characters are one-sided, static, less complex than an individual.

Thinking back to one of the many questions I asked before, I think that people can accept something that's created as reality (think lies). Social reality (what is real to a society) can be divergent from reality. What is accepted as true can actually be false.