Henrik Ibsen – A Doll’s House
This month we read a play written by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House, that deals with the fate of a married woman, who, at that time in Norway, lacked reasonable opportunities for self-fulfillment in a male-dominated world. Despite the fact that Ibsen denied it was his intent to write a feminist play, it was a great sensation at the time and caused a “storm of outraged controversy” that went beyond the theater to the world of newspapers and society.
Ibsen had completely rewritten the rules of drama with a realism which was to be adopted by Chekhov and others, and which we see in the theater to this day. He is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare, and A Doll’s House was the world’s most performed play in 2006.
