Original Music & Collage of E. Grieg's piano music Assembled by: Eve Beglarian
Set Design: Narelle Sissons
Lighting Design: Mary Louise Geiger
Costume Design: Meganne George
Puppetry Design: Jane Catherine Shaw
Sound Design: Edward Cosla
Choreography: Eamonn Farrell
Assistant Directors: Eamonn Farrell & Ilia Dodd Loomis
Tour Producer for Mabou Mines: Dovetail Productions, Inc. - Sharon Levy
Production Management: Technical Theater Solutions - Rhys Williams, Randy Crabb

CAST

Maude Mitchell (Nora Helmer)
Mark Povinelli (Torvald Helmer)
Ricardo Gil (Dr. Rank)
Kristopher Medina (Nils Krogstad)
Honora Fergusson (Created the role of Kristine Linde)
Janet Girardeau (Kristine Linde [after 5/21/07])
Margaret Lancaster (Helene)
Nic Novicki (Understudy)
Hannah Kritzeck (Emmy Helmer)
Jessica Weinstein (Anna Maria)
Ning Yu (Pianist)
Lisa Moore (Pianist)
Cristina Valdes (Pianist)
Eamonn Farrell (Stage Hand)
Ilia Dodd Loomis (Stage Hand)

DESCRIPTION

Nora comes home with a Christmas present. It is a dollhouse so large that the children can play inside. All the period furniture, the crockery, the knick-knacks are the right size for the children, Emmy and Ivar, who are hardly more than three feet tall.

Enter Torvald, Rank, and Krogstad - We find that the men are the same size as the children. Is this dollhouse the world of patriarchy, the world in which a woman never fits?
 
Here Ibsen’s feminism is metaphorically rendered as a parable of scale. The dollhouse is a man’s world and only doll-like women, who allow their men to feel grand, can hope to live in it.  Even the cod-Norwegian accents are miniaturized; like the accents in Disney’s “It’s A Small World”. Nothing here is real except the pain. Both Torvald and Nora are trapped in a meta-narrative, playing out an illusion of male power. Both pay the price: the death of love.

PRODUCTION HISTORY
 
Development Workshops:
  • New York Theater Workshop, NYC (June 20, 2002)
  • Sundance Theatre Lab, UT (July 7–27, 2003)
Premiere:
  • St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn, NY (Nov. 8–Dec. 14, 2003)
Tours:
  • Ibsen International Stage Festival, Oslo, Norway (Sept. 1–2, 2004)
  • Spoleto USA Festival, Charleston, SC (May 26–June 12, 2005)
  • Theater der Welt, Stuttgart, Germany (June 29–July 3, 2005)
  • Festival d’Automne, Paris, France (Sept. 27 – Oct. 2, 2005)
  • Theatre National Populaire de Villeurbanne, France (Oct. 5 – 9, 2005)
  • Theatre National de Strasbourg, France (Oct. 12 – 22, 2005)
  • Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis, MN (Nov. 9 – 13, 2005)
  • Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH (Nov. 16 – 20, 2005)
  • Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL (Nov. 30 – Dec. 18, 2005
  • Nazarian Center for the Perf. Arts, Providence, RI (March 29, 2006)
  • Yale Rep/Long Wharf Theater, New Haven, CT (Mar. 31 – Apr. 1, 2006)
  • Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (April 4 – 5, 2006)
  • Mass MOCA, North Adams, MA (April 7, 2006)
  • SUNY Purchase, Purchase, NY (April 9, 2006)
  • Israel Festival, Holon, Israel (May 23-4, 2006)
  • Israel Festival, Jerusalem, Israel (May 26-7, 2006)
  • Kwai Tsing Theater, Hong Kong, China (June 2-4, 2006)
  • Brisbane Festival, Brisbane, Australia (July 15-22, 2006)
  • 2006 Festival de Otoño, Teatro Español, Madrid, Spain (Oct. 25-29, 2006)
  • UCLA Live, Freud Playhouse, Los Angeles, CA (Nov. 28 – Dec. 10, 2006)
  • Harbourfront Centre, New World Stage, Toronto, Canada (Jan. 24-Feb. 4, 2007)
  • Rome Italy, The Auditorium, Parco della Musica (May 21-23, 2007)
  • Singapore Arts Festival, Drama Centre Theatre (June 21-23, 2007)
  • Edinburgh International Festival 2007, King’s Theatre (August 24-28, 2007)
  • Wroclaw-Dialog Festival, Venue: Opera Dolnośląska, Wroclaw, Poland (Oct 10-13, 2007)
  • Teatro Español, Madrid, Spain (Oct. 26-Nov.4, 2007)
  • XI Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro de Bogotá, Bogotá, Colombia (Mar. 7-10, 2008)
  • L G Arts Center, Seoul, Korea (April 3-6, 2008)
  • Epidaurus Festival, Herod Atticus Theater, Athens, Greece (July 21-4, 2008)
  • St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn, NY (Feb. 12-Mar. 8, 2009)
  • Maly Branch Theatre, Moscow, Russia (Nov. 6-8,2009)
     
AWARDS

2003-04 OBIE Award to Lee Breuer for Direction
2003-04 OBIE Award to Maude Mitchell for Performance
2007 Dora Mavor Moore Award (Toronto) for Outstanding Touring Production
2007 Golden Herald Angel Award (Edinburgh International Festival) to Lee Breuer
2007 Garland Award (Los Angeles) to Maude Mitchell for her performance as Nora
2008-09 Drama League Nominations:

  • Distinguished Revival of a Play
  • Maude Mitchell for Distinguished Performance

 

 

 

On Tour in MOSCOW
Nov. 5-8, 2009
 
Premiere: November 8, 2003
St. Ann's Warehouse - Brooklyn, NY
 
Conceived and Directed by Lee Breuer
Adapted by Lee Breuer & Maude Mitchell

 

More production shots:

“★ ★ ★ ★ ★”
“Ibsen will never be the same. Would that all classics could be so searchingly but lovingly re-examined.”
-London Times
 
“Above all do not miss the debut of Mabou Mines DollHouse. It is one of those moments for which one searches, night after night, and which one will not forget for a long time.”
-Le Monde, Paris
 
“…absolutely not to be missed.”
-Chicago Tribune
 
“The whole experience is so fascinating, thrilling here, confounding there that it must be seen.”
-New York Times