A s ’ l l o D se, u o H RT 2 PA
T EACHER INF ORM AT ION PACKET
2018-19 SEASON
TEACHER INFORMATION PACKET Compiled and Written by: Madelyn Ardito Director of Education Ayla Davidson Lead Teaching Artist
EDUCATION
Layout by Claire Zoghb, Graphics Director
T EACHER INF ORM AT ION PACKET
JACOB G. PADRóN
JOSHUA BORENSTEIN
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ARTISTIC Director
MANAGING Director
PRESENTS
A s ’ l l o D se, u o H RT 2 PA
BY LUCAS HNATH DIRECTED BY WILL DAVIS
MAY 1-26, 2019 COLLABORATING SPONSORS
Jacqueline Koral
LONG WHARF THEATRE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE GENEROSITY OF OUR EDUCATION SUPPORTERS
ANNA FITCH ARDENGHI TRUST FREDERicK A. D e LUCA FOUNDATION THE ETHEL & ABE LAPIDES FOUNDATION, INC. henry nias foundation, inc. THEATRE FORWARD WELLS FARGO FOUNDATION yale repertory theatre
FOR THE FIRST−TIME THEATERGOER: YOU! Long Wharf Theatre hopes that your first time at the theater is magical and life changing, so here a few rules we would like to suggest you follow on this new experience...
DO e s a Ple early. arrive
Please ave e l T ’ N DO e g a b r a g your e. r t a e h t in the Food and drinks are usually not permitted during student matinees except for bottled water. Be sure to throw out your trash in a garbage can or recycling bin in the lobby.
Actors feed off of you, the audience, so don’t be afraid to laugh, clap or cry if it moves you. But remember everyone engages with theater in a different way, so please be mindful of your neighbors.
Make considerations for traffic, parking, waiting in line, having your ticket taken, and finding your seat. If you need to pick up your tickets from the box office, it is a good idea to arrive at least twenty minutes early. Generally, you can take your seat when “the house is open,” about half an hour before the show begins. Late seating is always distracting and usually not allowed until intermission or a transition between scenes.
Please DO tur your cell phon off ne.
for T I A W Please ission. interm
ABOVE ALL: Please ENJOY the Show!
Phones and any other noise-making devices should be switched off before you even enter the theatre. The intermission is a good time to use your phone, but remember to turn it off again before the next act begins.
Intermission is a great time to get a drink of water, use the bathroom, check your cell phone and talk to your friends about what just happened in the performance. Doing any of these things during the performance oftentimes causes disruption and can mess with the actors’ flow on stage.
contents A B O U T T H E P L AY
8 Setting
10 Characters
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From Original to Translations
to Adaptations to Sequels
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About the Playwright: Lucas Hnath
14 The Feminist Consultants for “A Doll’s House, Part 2”
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17 American Theatre article: The Curiosities
About the Director: Will Davis of Will Davis
T H E W O R L D O F T H E P L AY
Look for this symbol to find discussion and writing prompts, discussion questions and classroom activities!
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Bad Rules
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5 of Society’s Rules that Need to Change
27 10 of the Most Obscure Marriage Laws in the U.S.
S U P P L E M E N TA L M AT E R I A L S
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A Doll’s House Summary
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READ a review – then WRITE your own!
36 Reading List: A collection of books ABOUT women, written BY women
37 Writing Wisdom From Rockstar Playwright Lucas Hnath 38
Works Cited
about the play
SETTING
Where does the play take place?
Where: Norway. Inside the Helmer house. When: 15 years since Nora left Torvald at the end of A Doll’s House (1879) The Space: The play takes place in a room. It’s quite spare. Some chairs, maybe a table, not much else. It ought to feel a touch like a forum. I wouldn’t be sad at all if the play were played in the round. And it’s crucial there be a door. A very prominent door to the outside. Costumes: Period, more or less.
Norway is a country in Europe bordered by Sweden, Finland, and Russia. 8
Megan Wilkerson’s set at Artists Rep, Portland, OR (2019)
Alexander Dodge’s set at TheaterWorks, Hartford, CT (2019)
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CHARACTERS
Who are the people in the play?
NORA After leaving her husband, children, and home 15 years earlier, Nora returns as a successful feminist writer to finalize some arrangements with her family.
ANNE MARIE The maid of the house who remained with the family to help raise Nora and Torvald’s children after Nora left, which has led to some unresolved resentment.
TORVALD Nora’s husband, a banker, who has struggled in her absence and finds her presence unnerving and complicated.
EMMY Helmer Nora and Torvald’s oldest child, who is not interested in having her mother’s life and who is about to get married.
Sarah Constible (Nora), Victoria Barkoff (Anne-Marie), Oliver Becker (Torvald), and Ellie Moon (Emmy) in the Segal Centre for Performing Arts’ production of “A Doll’s House: Part 2” (Photo: Leslie Schachter)
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Maribeth Graham (Nora) and Jessica Miano Kruel (Emmy) at Waterfront Playhouse. Set Design by Michael Boyer. January 2019
Image on cover of American Theatre magazine from South Coast Repertory’s 2017 world premiere of A Doll’s House, Part 2. Shannon Cochran (Nora). Photo by Debora Robinson/SCR.
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FROM ORIGINAL TO TRANSLATIONS TO ADAPTATIONS TO SEQUELS The original play A Doll’s House was written by Henrik Ibsen in 1879 in Norway and takes place in that setting. It premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark on December 21, 1879. The play is significant for the way it deals with the fate of a married woman, who at the time in Norway lacked reasonable opportunities for self-fulfillment in a male-dominated world. It aroused a great sensation at the time, and caused a “storm of outraged controversy” that went beyond the theatre to the world newspapers and society.
In 2006, 100 years after Ibsen’s death, A Doll’s House held the distinction of being the world’s most performed play that year. UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) has inscribed Ibsen’s autographed manuscripts of A Doll’s House on the Memory of the World Register in 2001, in recognition of their historical value.
Since its original publication, A Doll’s House has been translated into 56 different languages, adapted for over 30 staged variations and adapted for film, television, and radio. A translation is “the process of translating words or text from one language into another.” A “literal translation” usually translates the text word-for-word, rather than giving a sense of the original. A “free translation” portrays the general meaning of the original. To adapt a play is “to make suitable to requirements or conditions; adjust or modify fittingly.” Plays are often adapted for film, TV, or different staged versions.
A Doll’s House Part 2 is a sequel to A Doll’s House, picking up where Ibsen left off, 15 years later. The playwright, Lucas Hnath, took the information – the characters, the setting, the circumstances – provided in Ibsen’s play, and explors what might have happened had Nora returned to her home and her family 15 years later.
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ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT Lucas Hnath is an American playwright. He holds a BFA and an MFA from New York University, where he is an assistant professor in the Department of Dramatic Writing. His plays have been produced nationally and internationally, including at the Playwrights Horizons, the Soho Rep, the Royal Court Theatre, and the New York Theatre Workshop. He is a member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre and New Dramatists.
PLAYS A Doll’s House, Part 2 (2017) Hillary and Clinton (2016) The Christians (2014) Isaac’s Eye (2014) Red Speedo (2013) A Public Reading of An Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney (2013) Death Tax (2012)
AWARDS 2018 Windham–Campbell Literature Prize in Drama 2017 Steinberg Playwright Award 2015 Whiting Award 2016 Obie Award for Playwriting 2016 Kesselring Prize 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship 2013 Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award Citations 2012 Whitfield Cook Award A Doll’s House, Part 2, received eight Tony Award nominations in 2017
LUCAS HNATH
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THE FEMINIST CONSULTANTS FOR A DOLL’S HOUSE, PART 2
Laurie Metcalf as Nora Helmer, Illustration by Tom Bachtell.
When Lucas Hnath was writing a follow-up to Ibsen’s play, he reached out to some academics for their perspectives on its protagonist. By Michael Schulman
The New Yorker May 22, 2017 Issue https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/22/the-feministconsultants-for-a-dolls-house-part-2
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“A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society,” Henrik Ibsen wrote in 1878, proving himself, in 2017 parlance, to be a woke bae. He was writing about “A Doll’s House,” his protofeminist masterwork, which concludes with Nora Helmer, a restive Norwegian housewife, walking out on her husband, Torvald. The play ends with a slamming door, one of dramatic literature’s greatest cliffhangers.
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nter the playwright Lucas Hnath, who has, fourteen decades later, written a sequel. In “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” which has been nominated for eight Tony Awards, Nora (played by Laurie Metcalf) returns fifteen years later, having written a popular anti-marriage novel under a nom de plume. “It’s something I’d been threatening to do for a while, to write a sequel to ‘A Doll’s House,’ ” Hnath, a thirty-seven-year-old with Jim
Morrison hair, said recently. “There’s something about just saying that that sounded so audacious.” Hnath grew up near Orlando and read the play in high school. His mother bore some resemblance to Nora: she was divorced and, as an ordained minister, was a woman in a man’s world. After moving to New York, Hnath saw an avant-garde production in which Nora had a lizard tail. “I came out of that thinking, That was a terrible production, but that play’s kind of good,” he recalled. In 2014, while travelling through Croatia by bus, he copied a bad translation onto his laptop and began writing his own adaptation. “By the time I got to the end of it, I felt the need to keep going.” But he needed help. In workshops, he polled the actors about how they imagined Nora’s single life. Everyone assumed the worst: prostitution, debtors’ prison. So Hnath went in the opposite direction, making her a successful author. He researched nineteenth-century Norwegian divorce law and read books such as “Ibsen: The Dramaturgy of Fear” and “Marriage, a History.” Still, he said, as a man, he worried. “I wondered, Am I missing something?”
After the show, they got dinner at Joe Allen and discussed. “Tremendous!” Showalter said. “I thought it was going to be ‘Helmer vs. Helmer.’ ” Among the questions they had received from Hnath: Could Nora be sympathetic if she had left her children? “I thought that the audience reaction tonight said ‘No,’ ” Gilligan said—the crowd had cheered for Nora’s daughter during a heated exchange. In her research following Roe v. Wade, Gilligan had interviewed pregnant women who were considering abortion. “The word ‘selfish’ kept coming up,” she said. “There was this notion that the ‘good woman’ is selfless. So, according to that, Nora’s a bad woman.”
“The irony is that the most famous feminist heroine in the theatre, arguably, was written by a man,” Elaine Showalter said.
That’s when his producer, Scott Rudin, proposed a playwriting method you might call dial-afeminist. Hnath reached out to several academics, including Susan Brantly, who teaches Scandinavian literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Toril Moi, an Ibsen scholar at Duke and the author of “Sexual / Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory.” In one draft, Nora argued that she left because it was better for the children; Moi wrote to Hnath, “You could get some traction here by enforcing the idea that not all women are made to be mothers. . . . This point of view is still shocking to some feminists.” The other night, two of Hnath’s consultants caught the show, at the Golden Theatre. They were the New York University psychologist Carol Gilligan, best known for her research on female moral development (“In a Different Voice”), and the Princeton literary theorist Elaine Showalter, who coined the term “gynocritics” (“Toward a Feminist Poetics”). “Carol, we’re in the program!” Showalter said, as they took their seats in Row E.
Showalter had advised Hnath to read up on Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who, in the late nineteenth century, left her husband and child. “Her daughter lived to be ninety-three years old and was still bitter,” she said. Ibsen didn’t consider “A Doll’s House” a feminist play, but its impact was seismic. “In England, women said their lives were changed forever,” Showalter said. “Eleanor Marx—Marx’s daughter— learned Norwegian to translate the play.”
Gilligan had helped Hnath fine-tune Nora’s relationship with her children’s nanny, Anne Marie. “It’s a very intense issue within feminism today, where a lot of women are able to pursue the life they want because they hire nannies,” she said. (Ivanka Trump is Exhibit A.) She began making a point about Nathaniel Hawthorne, and became so excited that she knocked her Pinot Noir into her meat loaf. The new play, she continued, “came very close at the end to the transformative feminist vision, which, interestingly enough, is part of nineteenth-century utopian thinking.” “I am very much a nineteenth-century utopian feminist!” Showalter said. How did they feel about a man writing “A Doll’s House, Part 2”? “The irony is that the most famous feminist heroine in the theatre, arguably, was written by a man,” Showalter said. “There are aspects of the Nora that we’ve inherited that are filtered through a male consciousness. There just are. But women get a crack at it because they get to perform it.” 15
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR will davis http://www.wmjdavis.com/about
Will Davis is a director and choreographer focused on physically adventurous new work. Recent projects include Men on Boats by Jaclyn Backhaus for Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks, and a remounted version of that production for Playwrights Horizons. Orange Julius by Basil Kreimendahl, Mike Iveson’sSorry Robot for PS122’s COIL Festival and two productions of Colossal, by Andrew Hinderaker for Mixed Blood Theater and the Olney Theatre Center, for which he won a Helen Hayes award for outstanding direction. Will has developed, directed, and performed his work with New York Theatre Workshop, Clubbed Thumb, the New Museum, the Olney Theatre Center, the Alliance Theatre, the Playwright’s Realm, the Fusebox Festival, New Harmony Project, the Orchard Project, the Ground Floor Residency at Berkeley Rep, Performance Studies International at Stanford University, and the Kennedy Center. American Theatre https://www.americantheatre.org/2017/04/20/the-curiosity-of-willdavis/ Will is an alum of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab and the NYTW 2050 Directing Fellowship, Will is currently an artist in residence at BAX (Brooklyn Art Exchange) where he is developing a new work inspired by William Inge’s PICNIC. Will holds a BFA in Theatre Studies from DePaul University and an MFA in Directing from UT Austin.
Will Davis in rehearsal for “Picnic” at American Theater Company. (Photo by Dusty Sheldon)
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THE CURIOSITies OF WILL DAVIS American Theater Co. of Chicago’s new artistic director looks for magic in small spaces. BY SUZY EVANS
Will Davis is having a realization over lunch. We’re dining at a café in Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood on an unseasonably warm February day, and he’s talking about his attraction to William Inge’s plays—a journey, he’s just now remembering, that had its start not that far from where we’re sitting.
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ne of the director’s first jobs was as Damon Kiely’s assistant on Inge’s The Dark at the Top of the Stairs in 2006 at the Windy City’s American Theater Company (ATC), where Kiely was artistic director at the time. Working on that show was Davis’s introduction to Inge, whose body of work has haunted him for years. In particular the unquenched longing in Picnic has been at the forefront of his mind. So it’s no surprise that the 1953 chestnut was on Davis’s must-direct list for his first season, when he took over as artistic director of ATC in early 2016. But instead of helming a traditional version of Inge’s classic, he assembled a cast of individuals encompassing diverse genders, ages, races, and experiences to create “queer fellowship” (the production ran March 17-April 23 at ATC). Why the radical approach? Because Davis, who is transmasculine, wants to give the play’s famously repressed and closeted writer a posthumous gift—a present that Davis himself might have appreciated back in 2006. “I feel like I’ve been living with Inge’s ghost for quite some time, and this question, that I feel you can read in his whole canon, is some version of: ‘Shall I follow my heart song’? And the answer is no. Or, ‘Don’t you dare.’ Or, ‘It’ll kill you or no one will love you.’ And I do very deeply identify with that,” Davis says. Working on Inge with Kiely in 2006 certainly spoke to Davis at a
time when he was “a very closeted young woman with a sweepy bang haircut in a dress. There was something really deep in there about the unknown, uncharted land of want and desire and belonging and identity that I couldn’t have described to you in that way then but now feels like: Oh, that’s something I want to bring to life inside this play for myself.” Coming back to run a Chicago theatre is a full-circle move for the 33-year-old Davis, who had been making much of his career as a freelancer based in New York City and directing shows across the country: Andrew Hinderaker’s Colossal at Maryland’s Olney Theatre Center and Minneapolis’s Mixed Blood Theatre, Basil Kreimendahl’s Orange Julius at MOXIE Theatre in San Diego, Calif., Jaclyn Backhaus’s Men on Boats at Clubbed Thumb and Playwrights Horizons in NYC. But Davis began his career in Chicago, first as an acting student at DePaul University before he got cut from the program for “having no professional potential,” which he calls “one of my badges of honor.” (He has a BFA in theatre studies from the school.) “Now that I’m back here, the ghosts of all of those feelings of failure and ineptitude—I’m now actually processing the rest of them,” he says, adding that he often has strange memories from that time just making the 15-minute > walk from his apartment to the theatre. 17
WILL DAVIS continued
Molly Brennan, Jose Nateras and Will Davis in rehearsal for “Picnic” at American Theater Company. (Photo by Dusty Sheldon)
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hicago is also where he first met Bonnie Metzgar, who served as the interim artistic director of ATC after P.J. Paparelli’s sudden death in a car accident in 2015. They met in 2008 when she was running About Face Theatre and he was getting his MFA at the University of Texas at Austin. Davis would come back to the city to visit friends and was eager to network with people in town. Metzgar remembers immediately clicking with Davis, even though their first conversation was a bit heated: Davis was bemoaning being replaced as a director on shows he had workshopped, while Metzgar insisted her role as an artistic director was to give priority to artists in the local community. She saw a fire and a passion in Davis. 18
Metzgar’s main task as the interim A.D. at ATC was shepherding the company through grief over Paparelli’s death as well as searching for his replacement. Company members wanted to take the institution in a new artistic direction, and Metzgar reached out to several artists and industry folks for referrals. At least 10 of them wrote back with Davis’s name. “P.J. made some very strong programmatic choices for the company, including a lot of documentary theatre, and the cohort resoundingly agreed they wanted someone who was thinking about the work in a really new way,” Metzgar says. “The thing about Will Davis is he really thinks about the work of the theatre and uses different language. You just don’t hear some of the things he talks about from other people.” Like?
Most directors aren’t likely to hold forth on the “dance dramaturgy of the new play,” for instance. So she sent Davis an email encouraging him to apply for the position, which he remembers as “the most beautiful email I’ve ever read, and I as a rule always do what Bonnie tells me to do.” While he wasn’t actively looking for an institutional position at a theatre—he thought he’d maybe look for one in a few years—he was flattered by the offer. When he thought about it further, he remembered an assignment in grad school where he had to write his own obituary. He recalls, “The number one thing that came out of that really terrifying exercise was realizing that I wanted to be remembered as someone who made space for other people.” While Davis admits he doesn’t have any experience running an institution or dealing with funders and board members, he thinks his lack of knowledge might be an asset. Davis never met Paparelli and had never seen his work, but from what Davis has gleaned, he feels he shares his predecessor’s interest in new work and the theatre as a civic space.
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or his first season as artistic director, Davis partnered with the Chicago Inclusion Project to create an inclusive casting process for the shows in the 2016-17 season, and while one of Davis’s goals in the position is to bring the company back to financial health (it needs to “get smaller to get healthier,” he says), he also wants to make sure the people he hires reflect the community and the world. “This is a very, very white place—myself included,” Davis says. “One of my goals for the theatre is to address its whiteness. What I like is that as a field we’re talking about it, and more importantly, what I feel like I’ve heard in my new role is even better than talk. There are some funders who are saying this thing needs to change. I need to see a plan.” Wendy Goldberg, artistic director of the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater
Center in Waterford, Conn., identified this spirit of inclusivity in Davis before she even met him. Goldberg first took notice of Davis through essays he wrote about the lack of development opportunities for emerging directors. In response she invited Davis to the O’Neill, and this led to the creation of the National Directors Fellowship for emerging directors, for which Davis is a mentor. Now Goldberg is joining Davis on a newly created artistic advisory board for ATC, designed to help the organization stay fiscally responsible while also championing artists as administrators. “We do a great job talking about this idea of generosity in our field, but it’s a hard path, and we get bogged down because there is so much we need to do to stay afloat as artists/administrators, so I don’t always see this spirit present,” Goldberg says. “Will is just starting his career and he has this sense of generosity—I responded to that strongly, and you see it in his work, which is imaginative, theatrical, and has a great investment from his ensemble.” As a director, Davis gravitates toward ensemble-driven work. But while he likes to work with big casts, he prefers smaller spaces and minimal props. “One thing I’ve learned about putting the epic onstage is that you must pressurize it,” he explains. “I like to really hem in big shows and make it hard to move almost, and then let the theatricality of breath or changing the parameters of the stage launch that energy that has been collecting in the internal space. “It circles right back to where I am with Picnic right now,” he continues. “I was saying to this designer this morning: If you have nothing for a really long time, and then you put a chair where there was nothing, that chair is the most magical thing you’ve ever seen. What a strange creature is a chair? It has four legs. “It’s that withholding thing, and it enables the sublime. It enables the mundane to be spectacular. That’s what I love to see onstage. I think slickness is wonderful; as a theatrical construct I’m less interested in it. Maybe one day I’ll get way into that.”
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WILL DAVIS continued
Malic White and Molly Brennan in “Picnic” at American Theater Company. (Photo by Michael Brosilow)
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avis’s hiring at ATC also marks another milestone: He is the first transgender person to lead a major nonprofit institution without a defined LGBTQ mission. Davis says he now feels it’s part of his job to talk about his gender identity, whereas when he was freelancing he would speak to reporters about it only if the gender identity of everyone else involved in the production was similarly addressed. But now he says he wants “the light turned on as bright as I can get it that I’m here, and that I’m interested in refocusing the theatre on a few key things. One of those is equity in the arts.” Not that his relationship to gender is easily summed up. “I don’t like to spend too much time dwelling on the trauma of queerness, because I don’t think it’s politically a helpful thing, and I don’t think that my identity empirically holds any trauma,” he says. “But 20
I have experienced a lot from the rest of the world’s response to my identity. I don’t know what I look like to people anymore. I don’t really have a relationship to gender anymore in terms of a ‘this’ or ‘that.’ I feel like my interest in gender is about all of us as magical creatures, all of us as a soft collection of identities.” He does refer to himself as a “Peter Pan prancy man” on more than one occasion, and to see him walk around the theatre space on West Byron Street, this seems to be an accurate description. Davis doesn’t just turn around, he does a modified fouetté, swinging his leg back and landing with it horizontal in front of him. Why walk when you can chassé around the room? At an early rehearsal for Picnic, Davis is working on movement with this cast, and his fiancée, Evvie Allison, a downtown dancer he met when they were paired in
a show at queer dance company Ballez in New York, is on hand as the choreographer for the production. It’s the first time the couple have worked together professionally. The ATC space has been converted from its previous proscenium setup to a more open room. A pile of wood planks rests in the corner—the remnants of the ship props from ATC’s staging of Men on Boats, helmed by Davis earlier this year. As Davis plays around with dance moves, he responds to problems and challenges with curiosity instead of frustration, as in, “How curious that none of that worked.” (“People on my staff will tell you that you could play a drinking game with the number of times I say ‘How curious?’” Davis concedes. “It’s my main mode, as opposed to something is wrong or something is right. I’m just more interested in something is happening and how curious that that thing is happening. What should we do now?”)
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avis grew up doing ballet, but for a young woman increasingly feeling uncomfortable in her skin, the gendered nature of dance and particularly ballet took a toll.
“Somewhere in middle school something went wrong,” he recalls. “I could tell you now what went wrong; at the time, all I knew was, I was there in my pink tights and black leotard and my little toe shoes and just feeling like a monster. And when you go through puberty you feel that dysphoric physical thing where there’s you and there’s your body. When I think about it now, I just know the valley between those things was just getting epic.” Now that that valley has been bridged, Davis says, “The thing I feel like I didn’t have as a young person is a soul. I don’t feel like I was a woman and now I’m a man. I feel like now I’m a Will Davis. And that magical Will Davis has a soul. I have gravity. I feel like I’m alive on the Earth in a way that I was not before.”
Early on in his transition process, before surgery and hormone therapy, an actor offered to do some bodywork with Davis, which Davis strongly resisted because he didn’t feel comfortable in his own then-female body. But, as the actor pointed out, Davis had already begun to cover that body with tattoos of birds and feathers, and he recognized the recurring theme, telling Davis, “Your body was saying to me, ‘I’m going to break free and I’m going to get out of here, I’m going somewhere else.’” “I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s true,’ and I absolutely feel that in my continuing relationship with my body and the sort of audacity to think of its potential and not its limit,” says Davis, who gave in and let the actor do more bodywork on him. “And the idea that, like, you can feel something and dream of something and you can manifest it. Like, I made this. Cost me a lot of money. But I did make this body. And to me it means that anything is possible. I dreamed this idea, and now it is in three dimensions and you can touch it.” Birds and flight appear throughout many aspects of Davis’s life: in his apartment, in his wardrobe. The next night at rehearsal, as Davis is exploring choreography again, he tells the cast about a YouTube video of the blue-footed boobies’ mating dance, during which the birds lift their brightly colored webbed feet and marvel at each other’s appearance. He and Allison stand up and start mimicking the birds, raising their feet high in symmetry as their arms seem to naturally flap like wings; the birds’ movement, as well as their utter lack of self-consciousness, is something he wants the actors to channel in their performances. “They love their feet!” Davis exclaims. “I want to feel like that!” Then Molly Brennan, a veteran Chicago actor who’s playing Hal in the production, turns to Davis and says: “You are like that.”
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the world of the play
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BAD RULES
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ora has a conversation with her daughter, Emmy, in which she shares her thoughts on the “bad rules” rules of their society (89). Nora truly believes that society would be better off without the institution of marriage. Here is Nora’s thinking: NORA. We do a lot of things that aren’t good for us – this we do because our parents tell us from an early age – our parents, our churches, our leaders everyone tells us that we need it, so we believe it, and the idea gets etched inside our skulls but you only think you need it because it’s all you’ve ever been told. (p. 24)
NORA. bad rules is what they are there are so many bad rules in this world, Emmy I’m not going to follow these bad rules this is my chance to change the rules. (p. 89)
In the Classroom DISCUSSION:
What customs, traditions, or rules do we have because it is our history or because our parents tell us we should? What of those would you change? GOING FURTHER: What rules should we have, that we don’t? If you could create a new tradition, what would it be and why?
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5 OF SOCIETY’S RULES THAT NEED TO CHANGE And the cultural universals that hold them. The Odyssey https://www.theodysseyonline.com/5-societys-rules-change
Global society holds many cultural universals. Cultural universals are institutions, or groups, that each society has a form of, and each of them come with norms, or rules. At some point in your life, you will likely come across a conflict where you need to decide whether to follow, or to avoid, the rules within these universals. Here are some of the main cultural universals in society that could use tweaking.
1. Marriage For the longest time the people in society have held the idea that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that everyone participates in it. The goal of most women and men is to find a suitor who they will marry and spend the rest of their lives with in addition to raising children. Regardless of these norms that people have set, there is a growing number of people who live outside of them. For example, there are those who marry the same gender. Another example deals with the decision to marry. Some men and women don’t want to get married, and this can come with a variety of options. One is that you can be with someone without going through the formal ceremony of marriage. Another is to lead your own independent and happy life where you don’t need to settle down with someone. Any of these interpretations are acceptable, even if they are sometimes looked down upon or not talked about. 24
2. Family In addition to getting married, people are expected to have a family; and not only is this a must, but giving birth is stressed. Adoption is acceptable, but “experiencing the miracle of childbirth” is forced into our heads. When women say that they don’t want children, people will say, “You’ll change your mind,” and will try to convince them that it is a must. Men also can express that they don’t want children, and they are convinced that being a parent is a part of life, and it is best for them. The one thing that isn’t told enough to those who don’t want to is that is is okay. It is fine if your personal choice is to not have children. There is nothing wrong with this; you can still have a fulfilled life without having kids.
3. Gender Gender has a few different rules in society. One deals with gender roles. Women are expected to care for their children as their main role, and sometimes hold a job that doesn’t get too much in the way of it. Men are expected to be the breadwinner, and are also expected to be emotionless in many scenarios; they are only allowed to cry if there is a death in the family, for example. These rules are starting to be broken every day, though there is still more work to be done. People need to realize that their gender can’t prevent them from doing what they want to, and if it ever does, there is something wrong. Another part of gender deals with expression. Women are expected to wear skirts, tight shirts, and makeup in order to “be pretty.” All those who wear baggier clothes, and such, are marked as tomboys. They are also mistaken for men in some scenarios, and are usually told to “dress girlier” or to “look like a girl.” Men are expected to not wear tighter clothing, skirts, or anything that would make them look “girly.” These standards for gender expression only hold people down. There are many who choose to express themselves however they want to, and this is perfectly acceptable. You shouldn’t dress like a man or a woman, you should dress like yourself. The last issue deals with gender itself. Some people don’t agree with the gender they were born with, and sometimes want to change it. This is not something for others to judge; if someone feels as though they belong to a gender different from their biology, or aren’t sure if they do, they can decide what’s best for them.
4. Race When you are handed an application for anything, you are supposed to pick from a list of different races to describe yourself. Throughout history, people have labeled other’s races based off of their physical features such as skin color. There have also been stereotypes associated with race such as one having higher intelligence, or more athletic ability than others. These stereotypes are very inaccurate since there is no single gene that determines ones’ intelligence or athletic performance. There is also hardly any genetic diversity among our species. After watching a documentary for my education class about race, I learned
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5 RULES continued
that approximately 85 percent of humans have almost identical genetic information. This means that humans are nearly the same across the board, and not even their difference in phenotype makes that big of a difference. There are other humans on this earth who have the same mitochondrial DNA as you even if their ancestors are from Africa and yours are from Ireland; we all migrated from the same place as homo-sapiens. Therefore, people
should be able to decide which race they belong to, and it shouldn’t be confined to a small list. For example, my friend is of Cuban and Indian descent, and though his skin is dark, he doesn’t consider himself black. Many people argued with him about how he really is because of his skin color, but do they have the right to? The person should be able to decide, shouldn’t they?
5. Schooling Throughout middle school, teachers stress the importance of going to a great high school in order to get into a nice college, and later, get a good job. One type of high school is usually regarded as a less favorable: vocational school. Most people that go to vocational school are marked as “less intelligent” and are told that they only go there to take shop instead of academic classes. People are also critical of the fact that most of them go right into the workforce, or to a trade school. This is something that needs to stop. Teachers need to look at the jobs that these students get: plumber, carpenter, chef, designer, etc. Many of these jobs have a higher salary than the jobs that graduates will get after four years or more of college. Middle school teachers need to start to talk about the other job options like being a pilot, bus driver, garbage 26
man, or anything like that. These jobs, as well as jobs in the trade industry, are completely underrated, and the people who hold these jobs love them. Every kid should be able to find their passion, and have a desire to fulfill it no matter what the teacher thinks about their job. If you want to be an engineer, or a contractor, go for it! Nothing should stop you. Though there are many other norms within the cultural universals in society that need to be reformed, these five are a good start. There is a lot of progress being made in these universals regarding breaking away from the original norms. If people continue to make their own decisions about who they want to be, and defend them, we will grow closer to a society that is more accepting to all.
10 OF THE MOST OBSCURE MARRIAGE LAWS IN THE U.S. Find out about the weirdest matrimonial rules on the books. BY WOMANSDAY.COM STAFF Aug 2, 2017
Ever since North Dakota approved no-fault divorce in 1985, New York was the lone holdout in America, requiring couples to assign blame when they split. But in 2010, the state legislature approved no-fault divorce, siding with opponents who viewed the law as antiquated and passé. But what other outdated marriage laws exist today in the U.S.? Read on to find out which states have (or had) the wackiest rules around.
Legal: Marriage by Proxy for Military Personnel Marriage by proxy, which means someone can stand in for a bride or groom who can’t be present at his or her own wedding, is limited to members of the U.S. Armed Forces. But of the five states that allow the practice—California, Kansas, Colorado, Texas and Montana—Montana is the only one that allows double-proxy weddings. Essentially, neither the bride nor groom has to show up.
Legal: Marriage Under the Age of 18 with Parental Consent For a few months between 2007 and 2008, anyone under 18 could get married in the state of Arkansas with parental consent. That’s right, even babies could get married as long as their parents agreed. The original law was meant to allow pregnant teenagers to get married if their parents approved, but lawmakers forgot to put in an age minimum, which, combined with a grammatical error, left the law open to anyone of any age. After months of embarrassment for the state, the law was finally corrected in April 2008, making the minimum age 17 for boys and 16 for girls.
Legal: To Annul a Marriage That Was Done on a Dare Ever been dared to get married…as a prank? Neither have we. But apparently this happens often enough in Delaware that it’s actually an option when couples file for an annulment. Along with the basics reasons such as marrying “without the capacity to consent,” “under duress” or “with fraudulent information,” couples can now check “because of a jest or dare” when applying to dissolve their nuptials. Handy! 27
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Illegal: To Marry the Same Man Four Times In the state of Kentucky, it’s illegal to remarry the same man four times. Honestly, good for Kentucky. If you’ve already divorced him three times, someone needs to step in, because you’re clearly not the best decision maker in the world. Of course, as long as it’s different men, you can get married and divorced as many times as you like. Let the good times roll!
Legal: Man Must Prove Himself by Killing Birds In Truro, Massachusetts, a groom-to-be must “prove himself manly’” prior to marriage by hunting and killing either six blackbirds or three crows. Manly is a good thing. Dead birds? Not so much.
Illegal: Married Couples to Sleep Nude in a Rented Room Despite the fact that the infamous witch trials were over 300 years ago, religious conservatism is still alive in Salem, Massachusetts—at least on the law books. Apparently, married couples are not allowed to sleep in the nude in a rented room. Of course, reflecting on numerous media reports about germs on hotel bedspreads, that doesn’t sound like such a bad idea after all.
Illegal: For Men Over 16 to Propose Marriage—and Not Mean It In South Carolina it is illegal for a man over 16 years old to propose marriage and not mean it. Doing so means he’s committing a misdemeanor under the Offenses Against Morality and Decency Act. Not sure if that means he will be forced to marry the woman in question, or if it just means he can’t ask for a woman’s hand as a way to seduce her. We hope it’s the latter.
Illegal: Mistreatment of Mother-in-Law as Grounds for Divorce Many husbands would probably say their mother-in-law isn’t their favorite person in the world. But for those who really, really dislike their wife’s mother, moving to Wichita, Kansas, might be a good option. In this city, a man’s mistreatment of his mother-in-law may not be used as grounds for divorce. So assuming he wants to keep his wife, he can still be as nasty to dear old Mom as he pleases!
Illegal: For Married Couples to Kiss in Public on Sundays Imagine it: You get a babysitter so you and your hubby can go out for a romantic dinner. Afterward you take a stroll around town. Caught in the moment, you lean in for a passionate kiss. Busted! The police can cuff you and throw you in jail—that is, if you live in Hartford, Connecticut…and it’s Sunday. Well, maybe not these days, but technically, it’s still illegal in this city for a man to kiss his wife on the Lord’s Day.
Illegal: For Palm Readers and Fortune Tellers to Officiate a Wedding It’s most likely that your wedding was officiated by a religious figure or judge. Or, if you’re a bit more eccentric than some, you had a friend become ordained online so he or she could marry you. Good thing you went with the tried-and-true: New Orleans has made it illegal for palm readers, fortune tellers, mystics and the like to officiate a wedding. Guess they don’t want you peeking at your future. You’ll just have to go into it with blind faith like everyone else!
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supplemental materials
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SUMMARY A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
secret, slowly repaying the debt, and soon it will be fully repaid.
https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/dollhouse/summary/
Krogstad, a low-level employee at the bank where Torvald works, arrives and proceeds into Torvald’s study. Nora reacts uneasily to Krogstad’s presence, and Dr. Rank, coming out of the study, says Krogstad is “morally sick.” Once he has finished meeting with Krogstad, Torvald comes into the living room and says that he can probably hire Mrs. Linde at the bank. Dr. Rank, Torvald, and Mrs. Linde then depart, leaving Nora by herself. Nora’s children return with their nanny, Anne-Marie, and Nora plays with them until she notices Krogstad’s presence in the room. The two converse, and Krogstad is revealed to be the source of Nora’s secret loan.
Plot Overview A Doll’s House opens on Christmas Eve. Nora Helmer enters her well-furnished living room—the setting of the entire play—carrying several packages. Torvald Helmer, Nora’s husband, comes out of his study when he hears her arrive. He greets her playfully and affectionately, but then chides her for spending so much money on Christmas gifts. Their conversation reveals that the Helmers have had to be careful with money for many years, but that Torvald has recently obtained a new position at the bank where he works that will afford them a more comfortable lifestyle. Helene, the maid, announces that the Helmers’ dear friend Dr. Rank has come to visit. At the same time, another visitor has arrived, this one unknown. To Nora’s great surprise, Kristine Linde, a former school friend, comes into the room. The two have not seen each other for years, but Nora mentions having read that Mrs. Linde’s husband passed away a few years earlier. Mrs. Linde tells Nora that when her husband died, she was left with no money and no children. Nora tells Mrs. Linde about her first year of marriage to Torvald. She explains that they were very poor and both had to work long hours. Torvald became sick, she adds, and the couple had to travel to Italy so that Torvald could recover. Nora inquires further about Mrs. Linde’s life, and Mrs. Linde explains that for years she had to care for her sick mother and her two younger brothers. She states that her mother has passed away, though, and that the brothers are too old to need her. Instead of feeling relief, Mrs. Linde says she feels empty because she has no occupation; she hopes that Torvald may be able to help her obtain employment. Nora promises to speak to Torvald and then reveals a great secret to Mrs. Linde— without Torvald’s knowledge, Nora illegally borrowed money for the trip that she and Torvald took to Italy; she told Torvald that the money had come from her father. For years, Nora reveals, she has worked and saved in 30
Krogstad states that Torvald wants to fire him from his position at the bank and alludes to his own poor reputation. He asks Nora to use her influence to ensure that his position remains secure. When she refuses, Krogstad points out that he has in his possession a contract that contains Nora’s forgery of her father’s signature. Krogstad blackmails Nora, threatening to reveal her crime and to bring shame and disgrace on both Nora and her husband if she does not prevent Torvald from firing him. Krogstad leaves, and when Torvald returns, Nora tries to convince him not to fire Krogstad, but Torvald will hear nothing of it. He declares Krogstad an immoral man and states that he feels physically ill in the presence of such people.
A
ct Two opens on the following day, Christmas. Alone, Nora paces her living room, filled with anxiety. Mrs. Linde arrives and helps sew Nora’s costume for the ball that Nora will be attending at her neighbors’ home the following evening. Nora tells Mrs. Linde that Dr. Rank has a mortal illness that he inherited from his father. Nora’s suspicious behavior leads Mrs. Linde to guess that Dr. Rank is the source of Nora’s loan. Nora denies Mrs. Linde’s charge but refuses to reveal the source of her distress. Torvald arrives, and Nora again begs him to keep Krogstad employed at the bank, but again Torvald refuses. When Nora presses him, he admits that Krogstad’s moral behavior isn’t all that bothers him—he dislikes Krogstad’s overly familiar attitude. Torvald and Nora argue until Torvald sends the maid to deliver Krogstad’s letter of dismissal.
Torvald leaves. Dr. Rank arrives and tells Nora that he knows he is close to death. She attempts to cheer him up and begins to flirt with him. She seems to be preparing to ask him to intervene on her behalf in her struggle with Torvald. Suddenly, Dr. Rank reveals to Nora that he is in love with her. In light of this revelation, Nora refuses to ask Dr. Rank for anything. Once Dr. Rank leaves, Krogstad arrives and demands an explanation for his dismissal. He wants respectability and has changed the terms of the blackmail: he now insists to Nora that not only that he be rehired at the bank but that he be rehired in a higher position. He then puts a letter detailing Nora’s debt and forgery in the Helmers’ letterbox. In a panic, Nora tells Mrs. Linde everything, and Mrs. Linde instructs Nora to delay Torvald from opening the letter as long as possible while she goes to speak with Krogstad. In order to distract Torvald from the letterbox, Nora begins to practice the tarantella she will perform at that evening’s costume party. In her agitated emotional state, she dances wildly and violently, displeasing Torvald. Nora manages to make Torvald promise not to open his mail until after she performs at the party. Mrs. Linde soon returns and says that she has left Krogstad a note but that he will be gone until the following evening. The next night, as the costume party takes place upstairs, Krogstad meets Mrs. Linde in the Helmers’ living room. Their conversation reveals that the two had once deeply in love, but Mrs. Linde left Krogstad for a wealthier man who would enable her to support her family. She tells Krogstad that now that she is free of her own familial obligations and wishes to be with
FROM A DOLL’S HOUSE by Henrik Isben
Krogstad and care for his children. Krogstad is overjoyed and says he will demand his letter back before Torvald can read it and learn Nora’s secret. Mrs. Linde, however, insists he leave the letter, because she believes both Torvald and Nora will be better off once the truth has been revealed. Soon after Krogstad’s departure, Nora and Torvald enter, back from the costume ball. After saying goodnight to Mrs. Linde, Torvald tells Nora how desirable she looked as she danced. Dr. Rank, who was also at the party and has come to say goodnight, promptly interrupts Torvald’s advances on Nora. After Dr. Rank leaves, Torvald finds in his letterbox two of Dr. Rank’s visiting cards, each with a black cross above the name. Nora knows Dr. Rank’s cards constitute his announcement that he will soon die, and she informs Torvald of this fact. She then insists that Torvald read Krogstad’s letter. Torvald reads the letter and is outraged. He calls Nora a hypocrite and a liar and complains that she has ruined his happiness. He declares that she will not be allowed to raise their children. Helene then brings in a letter. Torvald opens it and discovers that Krogstad has returned Nora’s contract (which contains the forged signature). Overjoyed, Torvald attempts to dismiss his past insults, but his harsh words have triggered something in Nora. She declares that despite their eight years of marriage, they do not understand one another. Torvald, Nora asserts, has treated her like a “doll” to be played with and admired. She decides to leave Torvald, declaring that she must “make sense of [her]self and everything around her.” She walks out, slamming the door behind her.
NORA. Listen Torvald when a wife walks out of her husband’s House as I do now I hear according to law He’s released from all his obligations towards her Anyway I hereby release you from all your obligations. You must not feel bound by anything And nor must I. Look here’s your ring Give me mine. HELMER: This too? NORA: This too.
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SUMMARY continued
HELMER: Here. NORA:
So. Now. It’s over. I’m putting my keys here Concerning house things… ask the maids… they Know better than me. Tomorrow when I’ve gone Kristine will come for the things I brought with Me here. I’d like them sent on to me.
HELMER: Over! Over? Nora will you ever think of me? NORA: Of course often you and the children and the house. HELMER: Let me write/ to you. NORA: No never Permission Denied. HELMER:
But I must send/
NORA: Nothing/ nothing. HELMER:
…help if you need it…
NORA: No. To repeat. I accept nothing from strangers. HELMER: Nora… can I never be anything but a stranger to you?
NORA takes her travel bag.
NORA: Oh Torvald… only if the most wonderful thing were to happen… HELMER: Tell me what this most wonderful thing is! NORA: This. Both you and I would have to change So much… that… Oh, Torvald… I no longer Believe in anything wonderful. HELMER: But I will! Tell me. Change ourselves so that…? NORA: That our life together could become a marriage. Goodbye.
She goes out through the hall. HELMER sinks down on a chair by the door and covers his face with his hands.
HELMER: Nora! Nora!
He looks round and gets up.
Empty. She’s not here any more.
A hope leaps.
The most wonderful thing?!
From below the clang of a gate slamming shut.
The End.
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READ A REVIEW – THEN WRITE YOUR OWN! Sandra Marquez (Nora) and Yasen Peyankov (Torvald) in “A Doll’s House, Part 2” at Steppenwolf Theatre. (Michael Brosilow photo)
Review: ‘A Doll’s House, Part 2’ at Steppenwolf: A wife and mother has returned after 15 years. It’s awkward. https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/theater/reviews/ctent-dolls-house-2-steppenwolf-review-0212-story.html By: Chris Jones, Contact Reporter Chicago Tribune A bad marriage — I hear — can feel like a trap. Slamming the door on a lousy union can be cathartic. Even if you have no idea what awaits you on the other side. But here’s something to think about. What if the difficulty of leaving a marriage, especially a marriage with children, is actually a good thing, in that the potential horrors of a personal version of Brexit force us to actively work on our relationship and thus on our own selves? Perhaps you’re bristling at the notion that anyone should feel obligated to live their life struggling with such challenging forces, as distinct from merely living in perpetual personal bliss. If so, you must be unusually confident that the uncommitted life is more productive of happiness. Are a series of unstructured relationships without obligation really a natural human habitat? Is it better to be alone? Huh? Huh?
Humans have been going to the theater for a while now to ponder such questions. In 1879, a great Norwegian playwright named Henrik Ibsen created a character named Nora Helmer in a play called “A Doll’s House.” No longer did Nora want to be some guy’s little squirrel, rustling around on demand. And at the end of what has come to be known as a proto-feminist play, a revolutionary work of domestic realism, Nora walked out on her astonished and mostly clueless husband, famously slamming the door on loving hubby Torvald, her three sweet kids and the Scandinavian patriarchy. Or did she? For the last 140 years, scholars have been pointing out that Nora was headed into treacherous waters. What would this wife who left her family in 1879 be able to do? Would she be spurned? Would she be able to find happiness? Was this actually a smart move? “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” the taut, smart new play at the Steppenwolf Theatre from the writer Lucas Hnath, sets out to explore these and other questions about the state of matrimony and that of being alone. He does so through the device of a sequel. At the beginning of “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” set 15 years later, Nora walks right back through the door she once slammed. What has she been doing in Hnath’s imaginative telling? 33
REVIEW continued
Barbara Robertson (Anne Marie) and Sandra Marquez (Nora) in “A Doll’s House, Part 2” at Steppenwolf Theatre. (Michael Brosilow photo)
Among other things, writing books telling women how to leave their husbands. Nora, played in Robin Witt’s production by Sandra Marquez, does not get an especially warm welcome. Her abandoned, now-grown daughter, Emmy (Celeste M. Cooper) is not especially impressed by her prodigal mother. The housemaid of longstanding, Anne Marie (Barbara E. Robertson) feels a blend of uncertainty and affection. And Torvald — not so bad a guy, really — is, you might say, cagey. Or so Yasen Peyankov plays him. From there, characters debate the past and ponder their mutual present, as well as what it means for a disruptor to return to the site of the disruption. Despite the period setting, “A Doll’s House, Part 2” is penned in a contemporary vernacular. Witt’s production has the audience on the stage, putting you in mind of some sporting event, as if the characters were verbal competitors. Audiences on display in proscenium theaters is very much a thing at the moment. If you’d rather not be watched, stick to the regular seats. “A Doll’s House, Part 2” was a hit on Broadway last season, where it showcased a remarkable performance from the famed Steppenwolf ensemble member Laurie Metcalf, whose career now is such that she does not have time to replicate that work at her home theater. Any comparison is unfair to Marquez, a distinguished Chicago actress in her own right. On the other hand, I can’t forget seeing that Tony Award-winning performance and it would be unfair to Metcalf to pretend otherwise. For it was that good. 34
On balance, Witt’s solid production comes off as somewhat more serious than the original staging. All of the directing choices feel astute, the show is well paced, and the performances are well grounded in truth. But this production lacks a bit of the Broadway bounce, which is to say that it feels more pre-packaged, its characters’ choices figured out more in advance. A few scenes ripple most pleasurably and unpredictably — especially Torvald and Nora’s first encounter, Peyankov being especially in tune with the writing — but you sometimes feel everyone is rushing to the end of the play, rather than allowing for something entirely unexpected to happen. It also eschews sensuality. That’s a pity. It is, shall we say, a relevant issue. That said, I like this piece of writing very much — if you haven’t seen it, you should. Hnath is a supremely talented writer and, unlike most young dramatic writers today, interested in presenting many sides of an argument. The play is, you might say, an exploration of the personal costs of the political statement and a very wise study of how we all see things from our own point of view. Self-actualization has never been bigger than at the present moment; we all are empowered to be at the center of our own story. But “A “Doll’s House, Part 2” is more interested in what happens when someone — like your mom — is self-empowering and torpedoing your own reality. Do you suffer in solidarity? Or shudder when they return?
WRITE YOUR REVIEW
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reading list A collection of books ABOUT women, written BY women: Nora: I write books. Nora: Books about women.. and the things women do and want and don’t want and don’t do. And the way the world is towards women and the ways in which the world is wrong. (p. 21)
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay (for your older students. Trauma in here) We Should All be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Men Explain Things To Me by Rebecca Solnit Shrill by Lindy West
In the Classroom GOING FURTHER: Design the book jacket for your provocative, (possibly) semiautobiographical, modern day novel. Include a summary, a catch-phrase, the front cover illustration, and perhaps your pseudonym.
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writing wisdom from rockstar playwright lucas hnath December 17, 2017 Jeryl Brunner https://www.forbes.com/sites/jerylbrunner/2017/12/17/writing-wisdom-from-rockstar-playwright-lucas-hnath/#3ed991be607a
Ah, the impact of words. To borrow from Margaret Atwood’s poem Spelling, “A word after a word after a word is power.” Hnath shared some of his best writing guidance. Writing is rewriting. “I wish I could see how many drafts it takes to make something good. That is something that you kind of learn the hard way. You think there’s a second and a third and maybe a fourth draft. No. It’s 20, it’s 30, it’s 50. It’s an iterative process. There is no line where you finish your draft. You’re constantly working the thing. It’s playing with Play-Doh. With A Doll’s House, by the time we went to rehearsal, I was not finished writing the play, and that was intentional. I was bringing in these little tiny fragments every day. 20 to 40 pages of little fragments. We would read through the draft. And then the actors would read through these fragments and we would talk about them. Then we’d talk about stitching in a couple. And basically, I worked out every possible alternative for every moment in the play. We would examine every single possibility. You kind of work it out and figure out what’s best. What says what you want to say the best?”
Be open to inspiration from unexpected places. “Gertrude Stein was a really big influence on my dialogue. I got really obsessed with her play, Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, even with that title. I steal that rhythm all the time when I write. And I would just read that over and over and over and try to imitate it. My plays don’t explicitly sound like Stein. But there was rhythm there. Also, I used to love to listen to callin radio shows where people would call up asking for advice. There is something about how people talk when they’re rambling a little bit about their own story. There is something interesting about that. For a long time my subsistence job was actually teaching law students unemployment insurance law. I was completely unqualified to be doing it. But legal briefs are really interesting to me, especially the rhythms, language and the verbs that are used. You just have to listen for inspiration.”
Surround yourself with people who believe in you. “How do you trust yourself? That’s the hardest part. I need some people around me to say, ‘It’s good.’ I’ll say, ‘you have to explain to me how it’s good because I can’t see it right now.’ A lot of that that has to happen.” 37
WORKS CITED Wikipedia “A Doll’s House” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Doll%27s_House#Adaptations Wikipedia “List of Literary Works by Number of Translations” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_literary_works_by_number_of_translations# Ibsen Society of America http://ibsensociety.org/ The Reign of Mary by Beth Bynum http://scalar.usc.edu/works/the-reign-of-mary-i/catherine-of-aragon-and-henry-viii
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