Nora oder Ein Puppenhaus

Play

by Henrik Ibsen | Translated into German by Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel
In German

A luxurious home, beautiful children, a bright future—a (nightmare). Nora has traded freedom for status and lives as her husband’s pretty plaything in the eponymous “doll’s house.” Henrik Ibsen’s moving story of emancipation, retold by Julia Gudi. The bourgeois way of life as theater; the role of women: to be beautiful, to be funny, to be harmless. Nora plays this role brilliantly, reaping social privileges but paying the price with the loss of her independence. She lives in the illusory world of a house full of trivial things. Yet the harsh realities underpinning this world are increasingly coming to light: patriarchal structures, prosperity at the expense of the less privileged, and credit fraud. Henrik Ibsen’s Nora is a multifaceted character, oscillating between self-sacrificing self-denial and a girl of luxury, a feminist icon and a privileged liar. The play has been rewritten and reinterpreted countless times. 147 years after its premiere, it lends itself perfectly to a reckoning on the topic of women’s emancipation. Julia Gudi reimagines the drama from a contemporary perspective. She stages a modern chamber play in which romantic relationships are revealed as a political space, showcasing how love, power, and economic dependence remain intertwined to this day. NOTE: This production uses strobe lighting. A collaboration with the BA Directing program at the HfMDK as part of the HTA