Ibsen's Lively Art A Performance Study of the Major Plays

According to the Markers, a play, especially an Ibsen play, is fundamentally a text for performance. In their study of Henrik Ibsen in the theater, they suggest that a deeper meaning underlies the "reality" Ibsen represents, yet the precise manner of its expression is the lively variable that gives his greatest plays their abiding fascination in performance. This comprehensive survey explores key stage productions of six major Ibsen plays, from Peer Gynt to John Gabriel Borkman. The authors push beyond the more familiar confines of English Ibsen into the less commonly traversed territory of German, Russian, French, and, in particular, Scandinavian theater culture. The result is a study that ranges freely in scope from the earliest productions at the start of the great Norwegian dramatist's career to some of the recent and often radical reinterpretations of our own day.