A Doll's House

My favorite moment of performing A Doll’s House (and there have been many wonderful moments) is when, after our cast warms up together, I walk down the brightly lit hall, enter the dark backstage area through a door on the right, hike my maid’s skirt up as I climb the stairs and face a large screen, glowing with the yellow wall paper projected on it. Set into this screen is a little gray door. As I quietly pass the dusty books in Mr. Helmer’s library and catch sight of the paper dolls hanging on the walls of the nursery, I feel myself entering another world. The anticipation of entering the stage and entering the Helmers’ living room seem to mesh and as I open the door and walk into the room. The murmers of the audience beyond the brown wrapping that shields the stage from their view fade away and it feels like I’m returning to a place from the past, my past, a kind of memory. I can almost feel the draft coming from the door, smell the musty air and while I feel at home here, nothing in this room is mine and it’s lonely in a way. Then, Mrs. Helmer, Jenny, walks in. And I fix her coat, bring her purse and adjust her hat. There is a moment when it’s us again; we smile and silently wish each other luck. But by the time Jenny walks over to her place  on the other side of the room, I watch her with the mix of admiration, anxiety, resentment and awe that Helene feels for Mrs. Helmer. The music starts, Mrs. Helmer arranges her packages and I pick up my duster and let my mind wander to the place where Helene grew up, the lines blurring between inventing and remembering. The music changes and we freeze as the wrapping comes down.

There is something so special about that room. Well, there was. We tore it down two Sundays ago. But it never really existed to begin with. It was something we held as a cast. Some energy, some imaginary world we inhabited and created together. What I found through our two weeks of performance was that it was always a mix of feeling real and totally pretend, snapping out of character mentally and falling back into the world of the play. I would always leave the stage disappointed with something I forgot and making resolutions to be more on top of things when I entered next. And backstage, I would be going over lines and gestures and trying to prepare. But each time I approached that door, the door to another world, it all kind of fell away and for a moment I wasn’t thinking so much as I was just doing what Helene does and living in the world. Of course there were moments when I would stand on stage listening to Mrs. Helmer and be thinking, “Now you should fidget. Touch your face–wait, almost do it. Now she’s going to say, “I’ve never been more unbored!” But there were also moments when it all felt so natural. Once when Jenny was correcting me about calling her husband the “lawyer” when he was really the “bank director” she seemed more off balance, more over the top than I was used to. And I found myself nervously laughing at her in a very Helene kind of way. And every time she cornered me, desperately warning me to keep Mr. Krogstad’s entrance a secret, there was no time to think about how a line should be said or what I should be doing. I just had to be in the moment, trust my training and character work and do it. I think that was really the goal of the rehearsal process: to learn and practice how to be our characters without thinking too much. To create this other identity we could slip into at a moment’s notice. This identity was so richly developed that I will always think of those moments in that room as a kind of dream, a memory from someone else’s life.

by Caitlin O’Neill

It is one week since A Doll’s House has ended and I still pick up on lines that pop into everyday discussion. Strike was a whirlwind, a quick physical catharsis. But because strike is so quick, the aftereffects of the show persist. All of a sudden, I have broad free moments; with swathes of time I should fill with intellectual pursuits or finishing my homework early. Contrarily, this time will most likely be spent reading arcane and chance articles on the web. There is much to be said for following a structured schedule, not the least of which is that everything becomes so engaging that the hours of missed sleep seem just a natural, small consequence of the bigger whole endeavor one is involved in.

However, I must admit there is one aspect of the show I am completely acclimated to not having. No more emails, which—as Taylor can vouch—I thoroughly detest. I was averaging upwards of 50 to 60 on Mondays and Tuesdays, though obviously not all were related to the A Doll’s House, but those did make up their own little quadrant. (For comparison’s sake, I received just 35 today).

I recognized over the course of the show that audiences did indeed affect performances. Sometimes raucous laughter butted into set patterns of speech, while other shows witnessed deepest quiet for no apparent cause. Audience composition—age, interest, and background with the subject matter—aided in these distinctions.

Some performances were harder than others. By Saturday or Sunday each week, we all started to feel the wear of long nights, but I think our showings still proved strong.

Perhaps not too strangely, by night’s end of our last performance, I was tuckered out. But the show was a success. As expected, the last weekend was packed, with people turned away, a somewhat regrettable sign of our success. If only there were a way to send those unlucky people who missed out on the last performance back to the first weekend! The beauty and curse of hindsight, I suppose.  And so, the end of my semester’s part in a much larger and longer preparation cycle has come.  With my newly acquired hindsight, I know my best decision at the beginning of the semester was to email Ellen about stage managing.

by Jenny Madorsky

The beauty of live performance is in the changes. No matter how long and hard one rehearses and prepares for a live performance, things will inevitably change once the lights go up and the audience locks in. Breaking character is no longer an option. Any discomfort, unexpected technical mishap, or personal thoughts/feelings have to be directed into the character and the performance.

I became quite aware of this fact on our opening night. As the play began, Nora’s words flowed from my lips with very little effort, but my mind was in a completely different place. My thoughts raced on a completely different wavelength than Nora’s. “Why is that man yawning? Don’t lock eyes with anyone in the audience. Look at empty chairs instead. Is that my friend in the second row? They aren’t laughing. Why is that man yawning? Oh god, what’s my next line? I’m forgetting my gestures!” All the while, my mouth is telling Mrs. Linde about my trip to Italy. There were moments when I would snap focus back to my fellow scene partner, at which point the lines seemed to go blank in my mind and I would need to find Nora again. Luckily, I found it easy to trust my cast mates to pick the scene back up during these moments. After the shock of opening night, once the novelty of having people watching wore off, I found it much easier to keep in the moment on stage and focus on the people in the scene with me, as opposed to the observers past the fourth wall.

Unfortunately, not all live performance changes are under the actor’s control. Technical mishaps are completely unavoidable, and part of the fun. As an actor, one must learn to react to these accidents in a believable way and not let it detract from the progress of the show. On a Saturday performance during Act II, as Mrs. Linde walked through the door to Nora’s exclamation of “There’s something you must help me with, Kristine!” the Christmas tree fell down. Immediately I replied with “You must help me pick up the Christmas tree!” As the two of us struggled to put the tree upright, the audience burst into laughter, knowing full well that this was probably not part of the play, but relieved that it did not stop the show. Another such example happened on the last show, when the doorknob broke off the exit door. As Mrs. Linde existed to the hallway, Torvald declared “Finally, we got rid of her,” only to hear Mrs. Linde’s frantic knocking on the door once again. “Excuse me, Mr. Helmer, it seems your door is broken. I’m afraid I will need to use your other entrance.” She briskly crossed the room and exited in the back to Torvald’s utter annoyance, and again the audience’s relieved laughter.

It is moments like these that help us, as actors, stay in the moment and remember to think on our feet—or more likely on the characters’ feet. It is the thrill of the changes, discoveries, and accidents that make live performance so exciting. On to Act III…

by Ali Yalgin

After a set of exhausting tech and dress rehearsals we finally arrived at the opening night. The first time to share the outcome of our hard work with an audience (not counting the few who came during dress rehearsals). Since we have been such an intimate cast, it was quite different to act in front of the other people. Before the opening night performance started, I had questions in my mind such as whether the audience would receive the message we deliver, whether they would laugh here or there or stay still and sink into the complex plot of the play, whether they would leave  confused or with a clear mind, whether they would be bored or entertained, what they would think of our costumes and make-up, etc.

The good news is that the talk back on Saturday night has proved that the audience was on the same page with us. Thanks to the intense dramaturgical and the physical work we have done, we were able to interpret and deliver Ibsen’s piece in a clear way. The audience laughed at a few parts unexpectedly, but also seemed to center with us during serious scenes.

The bad news is that it became challenging to keep the energy level up, since we had been rehearsing for a while and also had a lot of things going on in our lives. Following our Friday night performance where our energy level peaked, we felt it more difficult to concentrate on Saturday night. The mechanics of our work was there, but the energy was different.

Every night has a different level of energy, a different mood, a different audience. It is in the nature of theater to experience each performance differently. Knowing this fact, we as the actors have to acknowledge the new conditions surrounding us, and adjust ourselves to them. This is not to say that we should change the entire blocking each night, and pick up a new character storyline and play with it. That is also a viable option in some productions, but not here and now. The audience is attending to see our performances to see the result of our work, and therefore destroying it completely in order to reconstruct a new play would be slightly unfair (although not absolutely unjustifiable). A better option is to keep the firm base which we have built together, and to make minor adjustments each night. Such would be an example to incorporate a cough to my character when I was almost choked by those coconut macaroons. Or to perhaps pace up a little if the energy of the previous scene was dropping. Most importantly, to keep on working as a collective, and hence to be responsive to the needs of the other actors.

Our pre-show warm-ups have been providing us with a great opportunity to check in with our cast mates to see how they are doing, and to review our physical work, to literally warm our bodies and minds up in order to regenerate the world we have created together many times. We have four more performances, and two days of break before them. We might have another low-energy night, but we can avoid it to be a major energy-slump by keeping ourselves together and continuing to churn in the inside, while holding on to the main mechanism of the play on the outside.

by Caitlin O’Neill

Opening night will be upon us in a few hours. After three dress rehearsals, I think I can say we are ready. Let the audiences come in.

I will be backstage during the show, connected via headset to Taylor and the other vital crew in the tech booth. The best of all worlds, as I see it. I watch as the cast readies for their entrances. I stand by the musicians as they play, weaving together the characters’ stories and punctuating the losses and gains. And then I listen to the people speaking into my left ear, and the show comes full circle. I experience it all, slightly confused as the interactions sometimes are, like when I answer a voice from my headset and get a puzzled look from someone next to me who must think I’ve forgotten the natural progression of normal conversation.

The only aspect I cannot see is the audience, that most variable and important factor, whose nightly collective energy subtly affects the play’s composition. Their amusement can slow light cues, while their attentiveness can heighten or quicken or measure out an actor’s interactions and tones. This variability keeps the material fresh and continually engrossing.

As a stage manager, I’ve often found that some tasks just are so much different than I expect. The simple is more complicated than ever imagined and the complicated ends up being the easiest and most entertaining to complete. Time drips patiently and speeds heedlessly, all at once. I know we’ve been preparing for quite a while now—I’ve even got many of the lines memorized to prove it. Yet, didn’t we just have the first rehearsal last week, September? Weren’t those dress rehearsals supposed to happen sometime in November? We’re here already?Gestures learned, cues inputted, entrances timed, stage constructed, props located, costumes sewed, video completed, musicians practiced.

As I said, let the audiences come in. We’re ready for their impact, and to make one of our own.

by Jenny Sherman

Standing in front of a green screen and gossiping my heart out (to no one in particular) while the camera rolled, I realized I know too little about the inner life of my character, Helene. Helene is the Helmers’ maid and we only really hear her voice as she announces guests, dinner and transports various important letters. Yet, as soon as she leaves through the study door, she is scurrying to the kitchen to gossip with the cook (I’m assuming there is one) or to find Anne-Marie and ask her what the goodness gracious is Mrs. Helmer up to now. We see only a sliver of her life and who she is, so it has been my challenge to imagine what Helene does behind the scenes and what makes her tick. While I’ve made some strides in developing Helene (as you’ll see below), I think I need to gossip with myself more and attempt to play out for myself what happens when Helene escapes from the living room.

Drawing from our physical gestures work, Helene has become, for me, a fidgety, young, eager to please, worried, naive young woman. But there is another layer to her: she has a fascination with the mysterious goings on of the house and really has very little concern for the troubles of the people she serves (as long as they’re entertaining and dramatic). She savors being the one with all the gossip and feels important when she gets to blurt out a new secret to Anne Marie. While she worries about her own skin and wants very much to do her job well, she harbors a pent up frustration and resentment towards Nora who is so constantly making demands and treating her like she’s invisible. It is difficult to translate this character work into my objectives on stage: when Nora frantically asks me about Krogstad’s surprise visit, my first impulse is to help her and to worry with her. But perhaps this would not be Helene’s first impulse; perhaps she rather enjoys her part in the whirlwind of strange events. Perhaps she is first concerned with defending herself rather than sympathizing with Nora. And maybe she goes along with Nora’s pretenses and idiosyncrasies while simultaneously judging her and laughing at her inside. Helene is constantly fighting to keep all this inside as she smoothes her uniform and plays her part.

I’ve always found it interesting that the entire play takes place in one room and that Nora stays there nearly the whole time as the other characters make their entrances and exits. Nora’s home is both literally and figuratively a stage upon which she plays her different parts, plays out her life. She always, always has an audience. Maybe it’s the crowd at the Stenborg’s party feasting their eyes on her tarantella or Krogstad trying to sniff out her fear. Maybe it’s Torvald examining her face for traces of macaroons or Helene watching her every move, making mental notes of every slip in her conversation. She is constantly on. There is always someone watching. In the end, part of Nora’s redemption and revolution is a demand for privacy, for the type of solitude and independence through which you can know yourself. As for me, I’ll keep looking over my shoulder, waiting for my chance to spill the beans and pass judgment, a tiny gear in the machine of societal expectations that pushes Nora over the edge.

by Ali Yalgin

We had a first run-through yesterday, which went quite well. Before the run-through, Ellen and I had a quick chat about my character, Krogstad. I have usually played creepy and slightly crazy characters at Duke, which were fun to play but not so deep. Initially I was quite worried about playing Krogstad, in that I didn’t want to play yet another creepy cuckoo antagonist. I have a tendency to over-characterize my roles, which makes both me and the audience tired after some point, and I have long wanted to break that habit. Krogstad is not a villain, and he is not a caricature. He is not strange, he is just a stranger to Nora and Torvald’s world. Since the couple’s world is not quite an honest one, Krogstad is not creepy; he just does not belong there, and he makes it tremble. That is why I have been having such a hard time playing the second and the third acts. His transformation is enormous, and requires a lot of attention, since it does not happen all at once. If Krogstad were a completely unacceptable man, would Kristine want to be with him? He wants to get rid of tags such as “scurrilous,” or “man of the gutter press,” or “scandal mongerer,” he wants to get out of the puddle of slime he’s been pushed in. In a way, he is like Nora, since the one thing he once did has destroyed his reputation, just like Nora who we can see fluttering on stage. What caused him to forge a signature? Ibsen does not tell us, so he might have had selfish motives, for he is a really ambitious man. But, it might have also been one of his naive moments. Regardless, the society, once identified him as “the other,” has never indulged him. People hit his head even harder to make him sink, and he can’t find a way out of the slime he swims in.

I guess it is important for me to remember that he really wants to save himself in other people’s eyes, and mostly in Kristine’s. Therefore, he wouldn’t want to cause Nora’s death. In a way, he shakes Nora’s world, but this helps Nora to wake up. He is not however an angel. Although he tries to pull himself out of the slime, he has been involved with a lot of dirty business, which is where my ‘centipede’ gesture is coming from. He has competed against Torvald ever since they were students together, and Torvald won, with a beautiful wife, three children and now a respectable position at the bank. Krogstad wants all that to be his, he is envious. He wants to rise, and now he has the opportunity to use Torvald as a step, and does not really care if Torvald would be smashed if he stepped up on him.That is when I play Krogstad I like him to touch the furniture in Helmers’ house, because he wants to have them, as he wants to have that ‘happy house’ to himself. Indeed, he is surprised when in the second act when he says to Nora ‘Your husband loves you so little? He knows how I can expose you, and yet he dares to…’ Having gone through such an unhappy relationship, Krogstad realizes that Helmer’s love for Nora is extremely shallow before Nora herself does. Krogstad is scary to Nora not only because he blackmails her, but because he constantly reminds her that her future could very easily look like his present. Yet he is kind enough not to turn this into a public scandal, or perhaps he just does not care to hurt Nora, it is Torvald he wants to surpass.

The important turning point to him is in the third act, where he lets go of his ambition. Life has treated him badly, and he is bitter about it, but a new life starts as soon as Kristine offers to be with him. He realizes that life doesn’t have to be that complicated anymore, that he doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone anymore, because she offers her a hand out of the slime. He does not care to have a better position in the bank, since he says he will demand his letter back. Kristine doesn’t let him do so for Nora’s sake, but he sends a letter saying that everything can be forgotten, and therefore he doesn’t ask Torvald to give him a leg up anymore. As soon as Kristine leaves the doll house, they start their journey together.

by Elena Lagon

Ibsen’s words are startling, well-chosen, poignant, and thought-provoking. He is a revered playwright and we’ve started off at an advantage: the play itself is SO good. Reading the play or hearing a recording could tell you that. But in rehearsal, I’m just starting to see how much the visual aspect–faces, clothes, hair, expressions, glances, and gestures–matters.

Today we did makeup and hair and full costumes for the first time. Without even being “in character” or saying a word, we were entirely transformed, and I was dumbfounded. Outside friends who saw me backstage didn’t recognize me and I gained a good fifteen or twenty pounds in costume. Nora was a sexy zombie, Torvald her stately, overworked master. Rank was more dignified in his suit than I’d ever imagined, and his pain was more noticeable as the lines on his forehead wrinkled. Why is it that these talented actors with which I’ve surrounded myself had never seemed so real to me? What is it about this effortless transformation that was so, well, transformative to me?

Maybe this is because Nora, and to an even greater extent, Torvald, are so very interested in looks. Nora relishes in her attractiveness, allowing her to “look good in everything,” and spends great portions of money on outfitting “the littlies.” Torvald suggests Mrs. Linde should crochet because it’s prettier than knitting. Torvald and Rank can’t wait to see Nora’s costume. Time and worry are spent on fixing said costume so Torvald can show off his pretty possession. Or maybe it’s the era. Late nineteenth-century women were seen and not heard, men didn’t dare insult, and raw, true emotions don’t reveal themselves but for short moments.

At first, the idea of silent gestures at different levels as interaction felt weird, like mime or interpretive dance. How could Anne-Marie tell Nora she made me so incredibly sad neglecting her own children, because I’d had no choice but to do so for mine? How could Krogstad effectively mix his hurt and love for Mrs. Linde? How could Nora communicate her revelation that she needed to leave everything she knew? But it works. I realized these glances, lip bites, reaches, and touches are mute interactions, but come from the same place as voiced emotions. That’s why our 200% Charlie Chaplin runs work–we need no help from language or vocalization to access that emotional storage and thought that allows us to act, to BE our roles.

So when everyone put on their petticoats and jackets, we changed stature, and needed no words to be who we needed to be. When we’ve mastered our outward appearances and our reflection of subtext and inner emotion and add language, that’s the end. I only hope that with words, our performances with be that much more powerful.

Blog # 1

by Caitlin O’Neill

When Nora and Torvald interact, the power dynamic is startlingly disturbing. The deeply seated power plays prior to Act 3 were rather hazy to me in my first few readings of the play. However, upon watching the exchanges between the actors as they puzzle through the psyches of their respective characters, the misogyny has clarified and morphed into a clear detailing of daily pressures by Torvald, which act to slowly belittle and stagnate Nora. Her opinions cannot find encouragement, or even purchase, in her own home. Rather, all must be in accordance with Torvald, the patriarch.  Socially he has been conditioned to act as he does—as she has been as well. Blame cannot easily be dealt out when the reality of their society has, in large part, led to their present relationship.

Nonetheless, this dynamic is, happily, not the only one put forth in A Doll’s House, because we see a strong contrast to it in the Act 3 reunion of Krogstad and Mrs. Linde, as they create the bounds of a mutually beneficial relationship where both are respected for their contributions. It should be noted though that Mrs. Linde had already undergone her own degradation of sorts through her marriage to a man with monetary prospects which could provide for her family. As Mrs. Linde says, she “sold herself once” (pg 94), and learned she could not ever do so again. Such a lesson undoubtedly accounts for a large portion of her self-assurance and consistent composure, which far outstrip that which is possessed by any other character.  Mrs. Linde parallels quite well with the present time and atmosphere, especially regarding the confidence of women and how it often requires some form of catalyst to crystallize and strengthen.

The general state of society does not produce such confidence in equal measures across gender lines. The aspect in today’s culture I find most disquieting is the way in which women are valued in society—and the similarities between Ibsen’s time and ours. This trailer put things in terribly clear perspective for me.

Gender disparity in powerful positions throughout industries is a direct reflection of how women are portrayed by media. The focus on the physical body of the woman matches the Tarantella scene of A Doll’s House because Nora’s goal is to beguile the men of her life, especially Torvald. Likewise, advertisements portraying women in piecemeal outfits seek to similarly fascinate and trap attention, never utilizing the intelligence behind the pretty face in that pursuit. Marian Wright Edelman, Founder & President of Children’s Defense Fund, said, “You can’t be what you can’t see,” and this is unfortunately too true. Mrs. Linde escapes this norm following her experiences of falling into it, and Nora struggles to slip out from the trap, requiring her breakage from the only life to which she has ever been accustomed. Her final scene challenges me to take a difficult review of the media and messages I consume, and hopefully to begin to recognize the subliminal, as well as overt, messages which seek to stagnate society from gender equity in every plane.