Written in 1881 and first performed on stage in 1882 in Chicago, Illinois by a touring Danish company, Henrik Ibsen's play, "Ghosts, A Domestic Drama in Three Acts", is a brilliant commentary on the hypocrisy prevalent in the nineteenth century. It's subject matter of incest, euthanasia, religion and venereal disease … [Read more...] about Ghosts
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Johan Ibsen was born in Skien, Grenland, Norway in 1828. He is known as the father of modern drama. His plays deal with psychological and social problems. His parents were Knud Ibsen and Marichen Attenburg. They were both from some of the few most well to do merchant families in the small port town of Skien. The close familial relationship of his parents and others in his town was a subject he included in a few of his plays.
When his father's finances took a turn for the worse when Henrik was seven years old, they moved to the country and lived in more reduces circumstances. This was another subject he brought into his writings. His plays often dealt with financial difficulties as well as moral conflicts. The characters in his plays would often be based on people in his life, including the long-suffering woman. This helped women watching the plays to identify with them.
Ibsen briefly assisted an apothecary and began medical studies before changing into a lifetime association with the theater. He started as a stage manager and playwright at the National Theater at Bergen from 1851 to 1857 and then became director of the theater at Christiania (which is now Oslo) from 1857 to 1862. During this time he wrote his first plays.
From 1863 to 1891 Ibsen lived in Italy and Germany chiefly. He had married Suzannah Thoresen in June of 1858, and they had their only child, Sigurd in December of 1859. Their financial circumstances were so poor they quickly became unhappy with Norway, and that is what prompted the relocation. When he finally returned to Norway, it was twenty-seven years later, and he was a famous if controversial playwright. In 1873 Henrik Ibsen was knighted, then in 1892 he received the Grand Cross of the Danish Order of the Dannebrog, and the Grand Cross of the Swedish Order of the Polar Star, and he was also given the Knight, First Class of the Order of Vasa.
On the one-hundredth anniversary of his death in 2006, the Norwegian government pulled out all the honors for a world wide celebration honoring this great playwright. They organized the Ibsen Year. Several prizes were awarded in his name including, the International Ibsen Award, honoring an individual, institution or organization that had brought a new artistic dimension to drama or theater. There was also the Norwegian Ibsen Award, an award given only to playwrights to promote Norwegian drama. It has been given every year since 1986 by the town Ibsen grew up in, Skien.
Since 2008 the city of Delhi, India hosts an annual Delhi Ibsen Festival. They coordinate with the Norwegian Embassy in India. They perform plays by Ibsen, and the artist represents various parts of the world and varied languages and styles. In 1906, at the age of seventy-eight, Ibsen died after suffering a series of strokes. When a visitor asked his nurse about his health, she said he was doing better. To which he replied, "On the contrary."
Asteroid number 5696 was named Ibsen in his memory in the year 1995.
Doll's House (Nora)
The play "Doll's House", referred to also as "Nora" by its main character, draw attention with its premiere. In 1879 when it was firstly performed it involved the problems of women's emancipation but today Nora's departure is debated in the term whether she had the right to leave her husband and children. Today the … [Read more...] about Doll's House (Nora)
Hedda Gabler
Henrik Ibsen’s play "Hedda Gabler" shows the unity of time and space, a common mechanism used in playwriting in which the fable happens in a limited place and in a short time. The main character has the same name as the novel. The story follows Hedda Gabler’s tragic life that, because of her own dissatisfaction with … [Read more...] about Hedda Gabler