Historical Research

Aside from the play itself, getting to know a little bit about the history during the time that this play was made might be useful.  Historical events in which took place during this time period could have had an effect on the "characters".  This could all lead to discovering why a specific character in the play might say, or act the way they do.  Acting is all about re-acting, but in order to get into your characters shoes, you need to become them.  Knowing the gender roles that signifies this specific time period might be that last key in re-creating a character.

http://www.historycentral.com/dates/1870ad.html

Lightng Techniques

You've got your script for the play you want to produce, you have a clear idea on what you want your set to look like, and you got your cast for the show; but your not done just yet.  If you don't have a crew to help the actors out (such aslighting!), you won't even have a show for the audience to watch.  By lighting, I don't mean to just shine a flash light at the stage and make the actors go, you definitely need skilled lighting technicians in the back to support you.

In lighting there are two goals: get enough light; use the light you have to shape and define objects in the scene. Lighting is often tried out "on paper" by using a lighting diagram before it's actually set. Many potential problems can be spotted in the process of constructing a lighting diagram. The most common of these is to light for a theoretical "stage front" instead of lighting for specific camera positions. It's also useful in anticipating problems with shadows falling where they're not wanted. Every light casts a shadow

Adding to this, with just the right colors or pictorial designs on stage, you could create a whole new look to a show and bring out the best in everything: actors, set design.



http://www.tv-handbook.com/Lighting_Techniques.html

Exterior Entertainment

Aside from the actors voices, background music can make a huge difference with scenes. Having a pleasant warm welcoming type music to start out the play, and during the climax it could be vicious or dramatic to intensify the moment of the scene or act. It's like the difference between a solo singer and a solo singer with choruses in the background filling in the blank spots. It can make the transitions flow better.

All through the colonial period and well into the 19th century, the most common form of popular music in America was the ballad. Musicologists sometimes formulate more precise definitions, but fundamentally a ballad is simply a song that tells a story. The story may be fact or fiction, or a mixture of both, but it has a central narrative: a tale of romance or adventure, the exploits of a famous hero (or villain), the history of a battle won or lost. Ballads both old and new were passed along by travelers from one area to another and handed down by families from one generation to the next. Originally this transmission was entirely oral; but eventually most of the songs were written down and published as broadsides: single sheets of paper printed on one side only, easily and inexpensively produced and widely distributed.

http://www.suite101.com/content/popular-music-in-19thcentury-america-a173154

Broadening Your Mind

You always want to make your production your own and not an exact copy of someone else. That doesn't mean you can't look at other people's work. Getting ideas of how to approach something is very useful. It's kind of like that saying, two minds are better than one.

The movie version of A Doll's House starring Christopher Plummer & Julie Harris (1959).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qssF73w6thw

The Set Design

Another very important aspect with producing a play is the set design.  Having the right background setting can bring out the best in plays, especially if they are very specific with every inch of detail whether it's the corner of a chair, the type of fabric on the couch, etc.  The color scheme can be a huge factor as well (walls, carpet).  Depending on what colors you choose with furniture can either disturb or intrigue audience members, as well as bring out the best of the that time period.

19th Century Fashion

Fashion back in the late 1800's were obviously different than the type of clothes we have in the present day. Especially with some many cultures coming together and new styles being created, looking back at what people wore then, you can easily identify what era they were from because it was so distinctive.

Chemise:A woman's one piece undergarment.
Corset:A stiffened undergarment worn for support or to give shape to the waist and hips.
Petticoat: A skirt worn under a dress.

Pantalettes were the undermost garment a Lady would wear. Unlike the plain knee length drawers, the pantalette was longer in its leg length reaching passed the knee. It was decorated with tucks and flounces. They were made from Silk or Linen.

Another undergarment worn was the a chimise pronounced "shimmy". This was a loose undergarment that reached below the knees. It had a drawstring on the neckline and a button on the drawers. The chemise was calf lengthed and often had embroidered hems.

Next was the corset. She would put the corset on over the chemise. The corset itself had many designs. It was designed to give shape to the hips and waist. And to lift the bust area with support. It may have been a simple design with a little embroidery and lace. It tied in the back.

She then put on the petticoat. How many petticoats she wore was often determined by the temperature and the season. If it was summer she may only wear one. But in the bitter cold temperatures of winter many women wore five or six petticoats under their dresses.

In the mid 1850's the hoops became popular to wear. After having put on the chemise, corset, and petticoat the 19th century lady would put on the hoop skirt. Some of the these were made with thin steel wire and other materials. Over the hoop she would wear her finest petticoat with pretty lace and embroidery on the hem. Finally, after layering herself with the undergarments she would then put on the dress. And last but not least, a lady always wore her gloves and her bonnet.








http://gallery.sjsu.edu/paris/fashion/

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.lovesickcorrectiveapparel.com/images/essay/ChildCorset.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.lovesickcorrectiveapparel.com/corset/advice/aboutcorsets.html&h=565&w=700&sz=42&tbnid=5XX0wX5ac6IdTM:&tbnh=113&tbnw=140&prev=/images%3Fq%3D19th%2Bcentury%2Bcorset&zoom=1&q=19th+century+corset&hl=en&usg=__0hiS5rSe9rXS8vy7d4qZihqmpC4=&sa=X&ei=69B5TYCMEtSErQGVgc3kBQ&ved=0CCgQ9QEwAg

Breaking Down The Play

A gender stereotype consists of beliefs about the psychological traits and characteristics of, as well as the activities appropriate to, men or women. Gender roles are defined by behaviors, but gender stereotypes are beliefs and attitudes about masculinity and femininity.

A Doll's House is the first full-blown example of Ibsen's modernism. It contains a devastating critique of idealism entwined with a turn to the everyday, a celebration of theatre combined with a fierce analysis of everyday theatricality (A Doll's House is teeming with meta theatrical elements) and a preoccupation with the conditions of love in modernity. In A Doll's House, Ibsen mobilizes all these features in a contemporary setting and in relation to a fundamentally modern theme: namely, the situation of women in the family and society. The result is a play that calls for a radical transformation [forvandling], not just, or not even primarily, of laws and institutions, but of human beings and their ideas of love.

http://muse.jhu.edu.ezp.lib.cwu.edu/search/results?search_id=1445100122&action=reload

The Author

Knowing about the author of the play is also very important. Henrik Ibsen (1828 – 1906), after publishing his first play in 1850, was appointed resident dramatist and stage manager at the newly created Norwegian National Theatre in Bergen in 1851. By 1857 he had assisted in staging 145 plays, and had written seven of his own. Between 1857 and 1862, he worked at the Norwegian Theatre in Christiania (Now Oslo), and after 1864 he lived abroad until 1891.

Ibsen wrote twenty-five plays. Most of the early works are verse-dramas about the Scandinavian past. These include Lady Inger of Ostraat (1855), The Viking at Heelgeland (1858), and The Pretenders (1864). The most important early works, however, are Brand (1866) and Peer Gynt contrasts sharply with Brand, for its protagonist is a man who avoids issues by skirting them. A skillful blending of fantasy and reality, Peer Gynt was interpreted by many as a satire on the Norwegian character.

In the 1870s Ibsen made a sharp break with his past when he announced his intention of abandoning verse because it was unsuited to creating an illusion of reality. The future direction of his work first became apparent with Pillars of Society (1877), but it was with A Doll’s House (1879), Ghosts (1881), and An Enemy of the People (1882) that Ibsen established his reputation as a radical thinker. Above all, it was a Doll’s House and Ghosts that shocked conservative readers and served as a rallying point for supporters of a drama of ideas. Unlike Dumas fils and Augier, who also wrote about controversial subjects, Ibsen did not resolve his plays in ways that confirmed received ideology. Rather, he made ideology the cause of problems and suggested that need to change it.


History of Theatre, Oscar G. Brockett, Franklin J. Hildy

http://danliterature.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/henrik-ibsen1.jpg

Getting Started

Once the play is picked, getting the script and breaking it down is the next step in getting a production under way. Knowing who the characters are, how many there are, how old they are, etc. are all valuable information in which a dramaturgs should know.

http://academics.triton.edu/uc/files/dollshse.html

My Early 19th Century Play

My early 19th century theatre play pick was A Doll’s House written by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen ( 1828 – 1906 ), dramatized the life of the writer Laura Petersen Kieler . Kieler forged documents to save her sick husband, but he demanded a legal separation, took custody of the children, and had her committed to an asylum. In the play, Ibsen's heroine, Nora , leaves her husband and children, goes in search of an education, and embodies the struggle for subjective freedom associated with the First Wave of the European women's movement.



The shock when Nora slammed shut her doll's house door reverberated throughout Europe and around the world. After the first production in Copenhagen in 1879 , Ibsen agreed to write an alternative ending for Germany: Nora's husband forces her to look at their sleeping children, and she stays. Although bowdlerized versions with happy endings appeared in America (The Child Wife, 1882 ) and Britain (The Breaking of a Butterfly, 1884 ), the original ending was championed by activists including the Russian Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontai , the American anarch‐communist Emma Goldman , and the British Socialist Eleanor Marx .

A Doll's House became the most performed play on the planet in the first half of the twentieth century as women dealt with the global changes associated with modernity. In 1911 , in the same month that the play opened in Tokyo, the feminist magazine Seito (Bluestocking) appeared and was derisively nicknamed in the popular media a nursery school for the education of Japanese Noras; in 1924 , Beijing warlords banned the play for undermining the moral integrity of China. A 1940s Argentine film version, framed as flashback, ends with an emancipated Nora returning home (directed by Ernesto Arancibia , 1943 ); a 1990s film version from the Islamic Republic of Iran has Sara/Nora leaving her husband and defying custody laws by taking her daughter (directed by Dariush Mehrjui , 1994 ). In the latest Berlin Schaubühne production, Nora shoots her husband, and he dies floating in a giant aquarium (directed by Thomas Ostermeier , 2003 ). Nora's fate has provoked rewritings, critical speculations, and dramatic sequels for more than a century. The most fantastical, written by Tanaka Chigaku in 1924 , has Nora training as a pilot in Paris, promoting world peace by flying from Italy to East Asia, and reuniting with her pacifist husband.

Extraordinary women have acted Nora; they have challenged the arts industry as directors and producers and have rocked society as political rebels. From 1889 to 1891 the English Ibsenite actress‐manager Janet Achurch promoted and performed the play throughout Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. In 1907 / 1908 , two celebrated Russians played Nora in New York: Vera Kommisarzhevsky, the originator of the Moscow symbolist theater, and Alla Nazimova, the flamboyant bisexual Hollywood star who in 1921 made one of the seven silent film versions of the play. Fifty years later, Hollywood cast Jane Fonda as Nora, no doubt because of her infamy as Hanoi Jane, the anti–Vietnam War activist (directed by Joseph Losey , 1973 ). The actor and director Mai Zetterling and the actor and UNICEF ambassador Liv Ullman were both famous Noras, but the most notorious of all was Jiang Qing (Lan Ping), the wife of Chairman Mao Zedong and member of the Gang of Four, who played the role in 1935 —a year known in Shanghai theater as the “Year of Nora.”

http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?entry=t248.e258&srn=3&ssid=1100691863#FIRSTHIT

http://thefiendish.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/ibsen-dolls-house.jpg