WTAMU students and faculty are mounting a production of Henrik Ibsen’s play ‘A Doll’s House’.
Theatre professionals consider ‘A Doll’s House’ to be the start of realism. Royal Brantley, professor of theatre and the shows director, said he felt challenged to take Ibsen’s classic and make it apply to a modern audience.
“Any dated work is difficult to perform,” Brantley said. “It’s no longer relevant. [In ‘A Doll’s House’ the characters] choose themselves, the individual, over society. That happens all the time in today’s world.”
Senior Travis Johnson said he felt the way the play is being stages allows the audience to take a more analytical view of the action.
“There’s a good bit of modern day that come through,” Johnson said. “It’s a good thing to put a mask of the 19th century person over the contemporary.
Ibsen’s play has been the topic of several criticisms throughout the years. Both Brantley and junior Rebecca Graves believe these criticisms help to add to this production.
“Although it’s a classic, it has a lot of criticisms,” Graves said. “So we decided to poke fun at the criticisms and literally put them on stage.”
Brantley went directly to the words of Ibsen himself when trying to figure out how to stage this production and underscore the play’s criticisms.
“Ibsen – one of his famous quotes about the play – is that a woman cannot be herself in today’s society,” Brantley said. “That started a question for me. If she can’t be herself, who is she?”
Brantley focused on the discoveries the character makes to move the play forward.
“I think [discovery] is the major action I’ve directed,” Brantley said. “I think everyone is a part of that discovery process.”
Johnson said he hopes that the discoveries the characters within the play make will influence the audience to take a step back and look at their own lives.
“The audience can take this lesson,” Johnson said. “To see things in their lives keep them down or hindering them.”
Graves said she thinks they have accentuated the humor of the play while also showing how the play parallels with modern times.
“We have tried to bring out the humor in the show because it is a dark piece,” Graves said. From Nora, the play’s main character, stems several of the show’s criticisms. Brantley said he believes Ibsen initially wrote Nora’s character the way he did to make a point.
“Nora is psychotic,” Brantley said. “There is no way one person can have that many personalities. I think Ibsen had a purpose her and we’re trying to service that inquiry.”
As the director, Brantley has adapted the play to have three different actors play Nora.
“I have adapted the play to explore these three personalities,” Brantley said. “She, Nora, has to play these three roles to survive.”
Brantley said he did not cut anything from Ibsen’s original script, he is instead reassigning lines between three actors who will portray the different facets of Nora’s personality.
With the start of the fall semester being pushed back to Aug. 30, the theatre department faced a time crunch for mounting this production. The play opens Sept. 30 giving the theatre department less than 30 days to mount the production.
Graves said that this production required more of a time commitment each week than past productions. “In year’s past, we’ve had rehearsal Monday through Thursday,” Graves said. “This year we have rehearsal Monday through Friday along with our outside prep.”
This production is especially important to the theatre department because it is their entry for the American College Theatre Festival. Brantley said that the department won’t be informed of the adjudicators’ decision until December.
“It’s all about scheduling,” Brantley said. “If we were to advance it wouldn’t be until February.”
‘A Doll’s House’ will run Sept. 30 – Oct. 2 and Oct. 6 – Oct. 9. The play begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Branding Iron Theatre. Tickets can be purchased at the Box Office in the Fine Arts Complex. WT students can get a free ticket if they show their Buffalo Gold Card. Faculty members are eligible for two free tickets.
