Not Your Parents' Doll's House

Well, if we weren't convinced before, we are now -- A Doll's House isn't the play we remember from college. In any case, this has been the sentiment in our recent post-rehearsal conversations. I think it's easy to find the play all polemic and nothing else -- indeed, this is why it works so well in freshman English courses in college, right? But just as Shaw's plays, which seem to present ensemble casts spouting individual ideologies, are, upon close scrutiny, complex, ambiguous, and interrogative, so too are Ibsen's plays. In fact, I think it was Shaw himself who first called Ibsen's works interrogative. A Doll's House continues to yield more and more and more with every passing minute of rehearsal. What a rich and rewarding play.

Rehearsing a play always makes possible these kinds of discoveries and provides new levels of appreciation -- as long as the play is good, of course -- but I think we owe much of our delight to the wonderful translation we are using. It's by Paul Walsh, professor of theatre at UMASS-Amherst. In his translation, which was produced for the first time by A.C.T. in San Francisco in 2003 -- the theatre that commissioned it -- Walsh takes enormous care to capture the great variety of voices of which each character is capable. Nora is, not surprisingly, the most obvious example of this variety. When she's with Rank, she's one way, with Krogstad, another, with Kristine, another, and with Torvald, another. Indeed, she has to wear many "hats" merely to survive in this world, and Walsh's able hand makes every moment convincing; not a single contradiction is smoothed over. I know the cast eagerly awaits the day when Walsh's translations hit the shelves in the bookstore -- such a collection is long overdue. I have likened his work to the late, great Paul Schmidt whose translations of Chekhov's plays are second to none. Those have hit the shelves, so we have reason to hope Walsh's will, too.

I'll be back.

Table Work -- It's What's for Dinner!

Congratulations to the cast of A Doll's House on two terrific weeks of rehearsal. We've discovered so much together, and, as we continue to build this production, let's continue to collaborate and to sharpen our choices.

I'm continually struck by how rich this play is. Of course, we all know it is -- its "classic" status suggests this at the outset -- but you need to work on the play deliberately, as we have been doing, to feel it, to own it. And although the play's focus is Nora, we would do Ibsen a grave disservice not to see how each character's predicament informs the action of the play. We mustn't ignore them. Krogstad is anything but a villain, and Kristine isn't perhaps the poor soul she initially seems. Dr. Rank is a combination of neediness and understanding. The audience -- as every audience has always had to do -- will decide whose side to take, of course, but that's as it should be. We need, then, to realize each character and each relationship as fully as possible, taking care to find and point up each contradiction. This trait, after all, makes them human, makes them recognizable.

I can't wait to see what's in store in the next few weeks.

A Doll's House Rehearsal Blog

A Doll's House by Henrick Ibsen
Directed by Kevin Costa
February 8- March 2, 2008