F1312 Re-contextualizing dramas in different cultures. The case of Ibsen, Gad Kaynar
Kaynar Gad
This course is dedicated to the exploration of the universal and local meanings and stage language of Ibsen's plays. As such Ibsen's oeuvre will serve as a case-study on how a dramatic-theatrical masterpiece might be re-contextualized in different cultures, maintaining a delicate balance between its universal imports and its local ramifications, as imprinted in the unique formal attributes of the specific culturally-framed productions. In Ibsen's En Folksfiende (Enemy of the People, 1882), Doctor Tomas Stockmann, the liberally-minded physician in charge of the baths in a provincial, reactionary spa-resort in the south of backward Norway towards the turn-of-the-century, sets himself against his brother, the Mayor Peter Stockmann, a typical Calvinist and hypocritical arch-philistine who tries to stop Tomas from publishing his scientific report that declares the "healing" waters of the place to be polluted. In a Chinese production of the play (2006) the haughty Dr. Stockmann is ambivalently embodied as an educated and enlightened Westerner, in a white colonialist suit, struggling against the petty deliberations of Chinese official functionaries who appear on stage in wheelchairs, uniformly dressed as typical party agents in the period of the "Cultural Revolution". In an Israeli adaptation, renamed Traitor (2010), the plot is set in a provincial, hot desert town, abounding with typical manipulations of petty local politicians. The adaptation manifests the rough indigenous mentality and slang, as well as the physically militant body language and the impoverished living conditions of the citizens, that render both the "treason" of the Doctor and the opportunism of the local leaders even worse. These examples attest to the ever-expanding universal influence of the unique thematic and formal features of Ibsen's drama. These allow, and even invite, intra-, multi- and inter-cultural interpretations of the plays and of their explicit or implicit stage-instructions according to the social, political and cultural contexts in which they are performed . The plays enable such transformations both because of their interpretive richness, as well as because of the fact that many of the works, whose plot takes place in Norway, have been written and premiered in other countries while Ibsen himself was abroad in voluntary exile. As such they reveal an interesting correspondence between the local Norwegian and universal attributes. The course will explore this phenomenon as one of the major keys to the basic understanding of content and form of Ibsen's plays. We shall explore a few models of the major genres of Ibsen's oeuvre, from the Realistic to the Pre-Expressionist, including stylistically differing works such as A Dollhouse, Ghosts, Peer Gynt, The Woman From the Sea, Hedda Gabler and Little Eyolf. The plays will be examined from the mutually complementing thematic and performative viewpoints. In other words: the plays, constructed as pre-texts for performance and conditioned by their production contexts, will be investigated as scripts with a specific rhetorical and ideological intentionality addressed to specific target audiences. On this basis we shall compare our reading with excerpts from video recorded modern "master productions" of the plays embedded in different cultures (such as the that of the Swedish Bergman, the American Lee Breuer, and the German Ostermeier interpretations of Nora), as well as with local productions from different parts of the globe, and (with, inter alia, the help of YouTube) of productions from various origin countries of the students.
Evaluation