A Doll s House, PART 2

A Doll s House, PART 2 by Lucas Hnath directed by Pirronne Yousefzadeh Oct. 2 Nov. 4, 2018 PLAY GUIDE

IN THIS PLAY GUIDE A DOLL S HOUSE, PART 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 PLOT SUMMARY CHARACTERS / SETTING GLOSSARY ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT: LUCAS HNATH HENRIK IBSEN AND A DOLL S HOUSE KNOCK, KNOCK ABOUT THIS PLAY GUIDE This play guide is a resource designed to enhance your theatre experience. Its goal is twofold: to nurture the teaching and learning of theatre arts and to encourage essential questions that lead to an enduring understanding of the play s meaning and relevance. Inside you will find information about the plot and characters within the play, as well as articles that contextualize the play and its production at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Oral discussion and writing prompts encourage your students to reflect upon their impressions, analyze key ideas, and relate them to their personal experiences and the world around them. These prompts can easily be adapted to fit most writing objectives. We encourage you to adapt and extend the material in any way that best fits the needs of your community of learners. Please feel free to make copies of this guide, or you may download it from our website at actorstheatre.org. We hope this material, combined with our pre-show workshops, will give you the tools to make your time at Actors Theatre a valuable learning experience. A DOLL S HOUSE, PART 2 STUDENT MATINEES AND THIS PLAY GUIDE ADDRESS SPECIFIC EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: 12 13 WRITING PORTFOLIO DISCUSSION QUESTIONS COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.1 Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.2 Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details and well-structured event sequences. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.5 Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.6 Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.7 Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.2 Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally. NATIONAL CORE ARTS STANDARDS TH.Re7.1 Perceive and analyze artistic work. TH.Re8.1 Interpret intent and meaning in artistic work. TH.Re9.1 Apply criteria to evaluate artistic work. TH.Cn10.1 Synthesize and relate knowledge and personal experiences to make art. TH.Cn11.1 Relate artistic ideas and works with societal, cultural and historical context to deepen understanding. If you have any questions or suggestions regarding our play guides, please contact Jane B. Jones, Education Director, at 502.584.1265 ext.3045. 2

EDUCATION DIRECTOR Jane B. Jones EDUCATION MANAGER Betsy Anne Huggins EDUCATION ASSOCIATE Janelle Renee Dunn RESIDENT TEACHING ARTISTS Liz Fentress Keith McGill Talleri McRae Letitia Usher EDUCATION/ TEACHING ARTIST APPRENTICES Rachel Bischoff Emma Leff PLAY GUIDE BY Betsy Anne Huggins Abigail Miskowiec Zoe Rosenfeld GRAPHIC DESIGN Sheyenne Santiago 316 West Main Street Louisville, KY 40202-4218 MANAGING DIRECTOR Kevin E. Moore A DOLL S HOUSE, PART 2 PLOT SUMMARY Fifteen years have passed since Nora slammed the door on her life as a wife and mother. Now she s back, with an urgent request one that leads to long-overdue reckonings. What does a woman owe her family? What does she owe herself? With biting wit, award-winning playwright Lucas Hnath examines marriage and motherhood, love and law asking questions that are as resonant today as they were when Nora first appeared in Henrik Ibsen s groundbreaking masterpiece more than a century ago. 3

THE CHARACTERS THE SETTING NORA: A novelist and advocate for greater freedoms for women TORVALD: Nora s exhusband ANNE MARIE: A nanny who raised Nora and Nora s children, including Emmy EMMY: Nora and Torvald s daughter The play takes place in Norway in the late 1890s 15 years after Nora left Torvald at the conclusion of A Doll s House, in a sparsely furnished room inside Torvald s house, with a very prominent door to the outside. 4

GLOSSARY AGGRANDIZE To make something sound more important than it is. ANIMOSITY A strong sense of bitterness and anger. CHASTISE To scold or punish. CONDESCENSION An attitude of superiority, talking down to someone. CONSUMPTION An old-fashioned term for tuberculosis, an infectious disease that attacks the lungs and makes breathing very difficult. CORROBORATE To confirm or give support to a statement. Before the turn of the 20 th century, many people thought of consumption as a romantic disease that affected artists and writers. DESTITUTE Extremely poor. EPIPHANY A huge, sudden realization. FORGERY Creating a fake copy of a document or piece of art. FRAUD Intentional trickery, usually for personal gain. INDULGE To allow oneself to enjoy a particular pleasure. OBLIGATION The duty to follow a course of action. PERSUASIVE Good at convincing others to do or believe things. Forged legal documents, such as this postage stamp, can cause havoc for government offices. PONTIFICATE To express an opinion in a long, boring way. PROSECUTED Punished under the law. PSEUDONYM A false name. RECONCILIATION Making up, becoming friendly again. RESOURCEFUL Having the ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties. RETRACT To take back a statement or position. SANITARIUM A medical facility for people recovering from a long-term illness. WOO To try to win someone s love, especially with the aim of marriage. Though the play doesn t reveal the pen name Nora uses when she writes, many women, including George Eliot, whose real name was Mary Anne Evans, wrote under male pseudonyms in the 1800s to avoid gender discrimination in the publishing industry. 5

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT: LUCAS HNATH Lucas Hnath s plays include The Christians (2014 Humana Festival), Red Speedo (Studio Theatre, D.C.), A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay about the Death of Walt Disney (Soho Rep.), nightnight (2013 Humana Festival), Isaac s Eye (Ensemble Studio Theatre), Death Tax (2012 Humana Festival, Royal Court Theatre) and The Courtship of Anna Nicole Smith (Actors Theatre of Louisville). His plays are published by Dramatists Play Service. Hnath has been a resident playwright at New Dramatists since 2011 and is a proud member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre. Hnath is a winner of the 2012 Whitfield Cook Award for Isaac s Eye and received a 2013 received Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award Citations for Death Tax and The Christians. He has also received commissions from the EST/Sloan Project, Actors Theatre of Louisville, South Coast Repertory Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, New York University s Graduate Acting Program and the Royal Court Theatre. Hnath holds a B.F.A. and an M.F.A. from New York University s Department of Dramatic Writing. A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view. Director Henrik Bill Fennelly Ibsen 6 6 6

HENRIK IBSEN AND A DOLL S HOUSE Lucas Hnath s A Doll s House, Part 2 is a sequel to Henrik Ibsen s groundbreaking 1879 play A Doll s House. Ibsen, a Norwegian playwright, was a master of realism, a genre of art characterized by accurate, believable representations of life as it is. His work, in plays like Hedda Gabler and An Enemy of the People, often challenged the status quo of the Norwegian upper class by highlighting the hypocrisy of Victorian morals. The original play follows Nora and Torvald fifteen years before the events of A Doll s House, Part 2. At the beginning of the play, Nora and Torvald have been married for eight years and have three young children. Their marriage seems picture perfect: Torvald has a prestigious job at a bank, and Nora is the life of every party. But Nora has a secret: in a time where women were not allowed to make business decisions without their husbands, Nora forged her father s signature to secure a loan. Her intentions were noble; Nora desperately needed the money to save her husband, who was deathly ill. The only way to save him, Nora believed, was an extended, costly stay in Italy. Torvald survived his illness, and remains unaware of his wife s interference. Their marriage is typcial of many upper-class marriages in 1800s Norway: Torvald is often patronizing of his wife, calling her his little squirrel and chastising her behavior. Problems surface with the introduction of Krogstad, a morally diseased bank employee whom Torvald plans to fire. Torvald is unaware that Krogstad has been blackmailing his wife with evidence of the forged signature. Nora tries to persuade her husband to retain Krogstad at the bank, but Torvald refuses to listen to his wife s counsel. Krogstad writes a letter detailing Nora s misdeeds in an attempt to blackmail Torvald. A desperate Nora considers suicide, believing her death to be the only thing that would save Torvald from disgrace. When Torvald reads the letter, his reaction is severe. He condemns Nora for her immoral behavior, says that she is unfit to raise her children, and decides that their marriage will now only be for show. His tirade is interrupted by the arrival of another letter from Krogstad, who, in a change of heart, has sent back the evidence he had on Nora. Torvald, relieved that the crisis is resolved, burns the evidence and, secure that his reputation is saved, forgives Nora for her misdeeds. Henrik Ibsen Nora realizes that her husband does not truly love her, and that he believes she did what she did out of stupidity, not out of courage or selfless love. She makes the difficult decision to leave her husband and children and strike out on her own. Nora notes that Torvald has treated her like a little doll, and that she has never been out of the control of a man, first her father, and then her husband. Torvald, concerned for his reputation, begs Nora to stay, but it s too late. Nora slams the door behind her as she leaves Torvald baffled and alone. A Doll s House drew criticism from the public because of its often shocking and controversial portrayal of marriage. Ibsen was even pressured to write an alternate ending, in which Nora stays with Torvald, for German theatres. Yet the play continued to draw audiences. The play crossed the Atlantic in 1883 and received its first professional American performance in Louisville. Since its premiere, A Doll s House has become a classic. Hnath s reimagining of these characters continues the original play s legacy of inquiry into the nature of marriage, truth, and what women owe themselves. Betsy Anne Huggins 7

A Doll s House, PART 2 by Lucas Hnath directed by Pirronne Yousefzadeh OCT. 2 NOV. 4, 2018 12

KNOCK KNOCK A loud knock, and then another, and another, echo in an almostempty room. On the other side of the door stands Nora, who s about to come face-to-face with the family she walked out on 15 years ago that is, if anyone s home. Enter Anne Marie, the nanny who raised both Nora and Nora s children. She finally lets Nora in, but she doesn t exactly offer a warm welcome. There s the door, she later snaps. I know you know how to use it. In Lucas Hnath s A Doll s House, Part 2, Nora s return sparks not only long-overdue personal reckonings, but also a bitingly funny, deeply moving interrogation of the meaning and necessity of marriage. (Continued on next page) 13

As the slightly cheeky title suggests, A Doll s House, Part 2 is a sequel. Henrik Ibsen s 1879 drama A Doll s House depicts the events leading up to Nora s decision to leave her husband Torvald and their three young children. In the end, Nora suddenly realizes how little Torvald respects her and how caged she s felt within their marriage, and the final scene concludes with a resounding door slam as she sets off to forge her own path. In Ibsen s time, Nora s departure and the play s piercing social commentary were controversial. Now, the Norwegian playwright s work is a cornerstone of Western literature but whatever happened to Nora? Perhaps it s audacious to attempt a follow-up to A Doll s House, especially one that doesn t require any familiarity with the original. In the Tony Awardnominated Part 2, however, acclaimed playwright Hnath does just that, exploring what s changed and what hasn t since Nora first appeared on stage more than a century ago. As Hnath began writing the play, which premiered simultaneously in California and on Broadway last year, he polled people about what they thought Nora s fate might have been. Given the limited options for a divorced woman in the late 19 th century, the results painted a grim picture. Hnath went in the opposite direction, imagining instead that Nora has done well for herself extremely well, in fact. When she takes the stage at the top of Part 2, she s a successful, selfsufficient novelist. But a judge is blackmailing her because she s also an advocate for a radical proposition: abolishing marriage. At risk of losing the life she s built, Nora has returned to her former home in order to settle some unfinished legal business with Torvald, igniting a series of confrontations filled with barbed humor and rapid-fire dialogue. Though set in the 1890s, A Doll s House, Part 2 offers an incisive perspective on how we in the 21 st century continue to grapple with marriage, motherhood, and gender roles. The play crackles with modern wit and language, finding comedy in the contradictions between Victorian refinement and our decidedly more profane vernacular. The creative team behind Actors Theatre s production in the Victor Jory Theatre elaborates on this sensibility by including wryly anachronistic details in the scenic design and costumes. But as director Pirronne Yousefzadeh notes, Hnath s style isn t just for laughs; it also heightens the way in which the play is holding a mirror up to our society and how we expect certain things of women how we re still carrying an inherited set of traditions from a patriarchal culture that is alive and well. In much of Hnath s work, tense situations and conflicted characters fuel explorations of thorny ideas. His writing often invites audiences to reexamine their own beliefs, and this call to personal reflection is among the reasons Yousefzadeh is looking forward to returning to Actors to direct A Doll s House, Part 2. I think the play fails if I always side with Nora or if I always side with Torvald, she muses. How much can I actually find myself, as an audience member, wrestling with their different points of view? Neither Hnath nor Yousefzadeh is a stranger to Louisville. Three of Hnath s plays have been featured in the Humana Festival: Death Tax (2012), nightnight (part of Sleep Rock Thy Brain in 2013), and The Christians, an Actors Theatre commission that premiered in the 2014 Festival and became one of the most produced plays in the country. Yousefzadeh s Actors Theatre directing credits include That High Lonesome Sound (2015 Humana Festival), and she s also an alumna of the Professional Training Company. When circumstances force Nora to knock again on the door of her old life, the result is not unlike a boxing match, with opposing sides squaring off for one round after another. It s wit, however, that propels A Doll s House, Part 2, not brute force. Yousefzadeh compares the play to a showdown between razor-sharp lawyers and says that it creates a space for a passionate exchange of ideas about how we live and what we believe in. What does a woman owe her family? What does she owe herself? In a world in which men and women aren t equal, is it even possible for them to build true partnerships? Interviewing Hnath on CBS Sunday Morning last year, Mo Rocca remarked, This is the kind of play that I think a lot of people leave arguing about. Laughing, Hnath replied, Yes. That makes me happy! I want more argument.... You go home, hopefully, and start making your own case for why you think what you think. Jessica Reese 14

SPOTLIGHT: ACTORS ALUMNA PIRRONNE YOUSEFZADEH Helena Modjeska Photo by Christine Jean Chambers. Director Pirronne Yousefzadeh is an alumna of the 2003-2004 Professional Training Company, and she s previously directed several plays at Actors, including That High Lonesome Sound (2015 Humana Festival). Below, she reflects on what it means to return to Louisville for A Doll s House, Part 2: Coming back to Actors Theatre always feels like coming home. I have such gratitude for Actors because it s where I spent one of the most formative years of my career as a member of the Professional Training Company. Having had that first-hand, hands-on experience, I have a deep appreciation for the way this production will be supported by everyone on staff and in the PTC. I know I m going to have a directing assistant, and I m going to have PTC actors observing my rehearsals, and that s a way of giving back to a program and a theatre that has given me so much. DID YOU KNOW? The U.S. premiere of Henrik Ibsen s landmark play A Doll s House took place in Louisville in 1883. Helena Modjeska, pictured above, performed the lead role at Macauley s Theatre, which was on Walnut Street (now Muhammad Ali Boulevard). In Modjeska s version, Nora was renamed Thora, and in the end, she chose to stay with her family! The modjeska, a caramelmarshmallow candy that s a Louisville specialty, was named after the renowned Polish actress. It is no exaggeration to say that my career would not be the same if not for my year at Actors. It forged my path in countless ways, and many of the people whom I still work with and whom I consider part of my tribe as an artist are people I met at Actors. Every time I come back, every show that I do, that sense of accumulated history feels deeper and more profound.

WRITING PORTFOLIO NARRATIVE: CCRA.W.3 A Doll s House, Part 2 takes place 15 years after Henrik Ibsen s A Doll s House. Choose a character from existing media (book, movie, television show, video game, etc.), and write a scene that takes place 15 years after that character s story originally ends. Consider how the character might have changed. Is the character still dealing with conflicts that were present in the original story? What might the character s goals and objectives be now? INFORMATIVE: CCRA.W.2 Write a review of the performance of A Doll s House, Part 2 that you saw at Actors Theatre of Louisville. What parts of the play (the actors performances, the set, props, costumes, lighting and sound design, etc.) Were your favorites and why? How effective were these elements in telling the story? Back up your claims with evidence and details from your experience of watching the performance. Then, make a copy and send it to the education department at: ARGUMENTATIVE: CCRA.W.1 Spoiler alert! When Torvald finally grants Nora a divorce, she refuses to take it because, as she explains to Emmy, The kind of world I m trying to make for you it hasn t happened yet. But it won t happen this way not if I let you or Torvald fix this problem for me. Do you think Nora s choice to face the judge head-on will lead to a better world? Based on what you know about the world of the play and about Nora s character, do you think Nora is actually acting altruistically (for the betterment of others), or does she have a more self-serving goal up her sleeve? Explain. Actors Theatre of Louisville c/o Jane B. Jones 316 West Main Street Louisville, Kentucky 40202 We will share your thoughts with the creative team. 12

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS PRE-SHOW QUESTIONS 1. A Doll s House, Part 2 deals with marital relationship and gender roles in the late 1800s. What do you expect the roles for a married woman in this time period to be? What about the role of a married man? 2. Lucas Hnath chose to revisit Henrik Ibsen s A Doll s House more than 130 years after its first performance. What makes a work of art timeless? Why do you think we return to certain stories again and again? Has a remake/retelling of a story ever helped you understand the original better? Explain. POST-SHOW QUESTIONS 1. The title A Doll s House evokes the ideas of manipulation and falsehood that are significant themes in both Ibsen s and Hnath s versions of the story. In your opinion, who was being manipulated or played? Who was in control? In what moments did you see that balance of power shift? 2. A Doll s House, Part 2 is populated by complex characters, none of whom are clearly bad or good. Which characters did you feel sympathy for? Whose line of reasoning did you find most persuasive or compelling? Did you find the ending satisfying? Why or why not? 13