{"id":16464,"date":"2018-09-25T01:40:44","date_gmt":"2018-09-25T08:40:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=16464"},"modified":"2018-09-26T06:52:18","modified_gmt":"2018-09-26T13:52:18","slug":"unpacking-a-dolls-house-for-a-second-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2018\/09\/25\/unpacking-a-dolls-house-for-a-second-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Unpacking A Doll\u2019s House<\/em> for a second time"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Henrik Ibsen wrote A Doll\u2019s House <\/em>in the 1870s, he raised shockingly progressive and controversial questions about marriage, motherhood, and women\u2019s societal roles. When the central character, Nora, chose to leave her marriage and children at the end of the play, it was a door slam for gender equality.<\/p>\n

In 2017, playwright Lucas Hnath brought the characters back in A Doll\u2019s House, Part 2<\/em>to examine the aftermath. The second part of the story takes place 15 years after the original, and, according to Belfry Theatre artistic director Michael Shamata, audience members don\u2019t have to have seen the first play to understand the second.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
A Doll’s House, Part 2<\/em> examines relationships and inequality through a modern lens (photo by Tim Matheson).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s recapped, in a kind of way, during the show. There\u2019s enough exposition in the first scenes that the audience would kind of figure out what would happen,\u201d says Shamata. \u201cBut the main thing is, at the end of A Doll\u2019s House<\/em>\u2014the original\u2014Nora, the wife,realizes that she and her husband don\u2019t really have a real relationship, they\u2019re both kind of playing roles, and she realizes that she needs to leave, and find out who she is, and find out what the world is really all about. So, she leaves her husband and her three children, and walks out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Belfry chose A Doll\u2019s House, Part 2<\/em>for many reasons to be its 2018-2019 opening production, one reason being Shamata\u2019s love of the script and appreciation for Hnath\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Hnath]felt like the conversation had not been completed, that the conversation that Ibsen started about marriage, that there was more conversation to be had,\u201d says Shamata. \u201cSo, he brings Nora back after 15 years of being absent, and partly she confronts the damage that she created\u2014the mess that she left behind by leaving\u2014to the three other characters in the play.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fact that the complexities and nuances of marriage are as true now as they were in the 1800s is one of the most exciting aspects of the play for Shamata, who says that the original ending of Ibsen\u2019s play was deemed too shocking and changed in several countries because in the 1800s people couldn\u2019t fathom the idea of a woman leaving her children; Shamata believes this notion still holds true in today\u2019s society.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea of a woman abandoning her children is still considered\u2026 it\u2019s just not something that people do,\u201d says Shamata.<\/p>\n

This blending of two time periods allows A Doll\u2019s House, Part 2<\/em>to examine the issues of relationships and equality through a modern lens.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s exactly what the playwright set out to do\u2014write a play that\u2019s in period costume, the language to a certain extent feels modern, feels contemporary, and the issues feel totally contemporary, but it could be a period piece,\u201d says Shamata.<\/p>\n

Past all its intricacies, at the heart of the show is a family with incredibly complex issues, and getting to the truth of that is one of the biggest challenges of the production.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s really exciting is when it feels like people talking like people who have a lot of history, but haven\u2019t seen each other for a long time,\u201d says Shamata. \u201cSo there\u2019s all this kind of baggage, and there\u2019s also a lot of catch-up, and making sure that we all have our perspectives straight for each character, so that we all remember the same events but we have our own interpretation of them. It\u2019s kind like when you see family at Christmas, and don\u2019t see them in between\u2026 You know them, but you\u2019ve missed a whole year of their lives and what\u2019s happened to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Doll\u2019s House, Part 2
\n<\/em>The Belfry Theatre
\nUntil Sunday, October 14
\nbelfry.bc.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Henrik Ibsen wrote A Doll\u2019s House in the 1870s, he raised shockingly progressive and controversial questions about marriage, motherhood, and women\u2019s societal roles. When the central character, Nora, chose to leave her marriage and children at the end of the play, it was a door slam for gender equality. In 2017, playwright Lucas Hnath […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16465,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive","category-september-26-2018"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}