Mirror Magazine

Mirror Magazine

Welcome to Doll’s House
By Marisa de Silva
“Nora, Nora! Just like a woman! But seriously, Nora, you know what I think about that sort of thing. No debts, no borrowing…” clearly portrays the patriarchal society in which Torvald and Nora Helmer lived and how little has actually changed over the centuries. Renowned Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s work, A Doll’s House is a critical view on the traditional roles of men and women in Victorian marriages. The British School in Colombo, under the direction of Anuruddha Fernando, take on the challenge of straying away from the general trend of school productions and moving theatre on to the next level.

On his choice of plays Anuruddha explains that they were looking for something more serious than the average type of play done by schools. This particular work of Ibsen is probably one of the first feminist plays to come out of Europe and thus, seemed like an apt choice. Having discussed the many play possibilities available to the children with some of the staff members, they decided that this would be the best option.

“We wanted to break away from the everyday colourful musical type of play usually associated with school productions,” he said. He didn’t want to hide behind the usual expectations of school plays but, rather, to widen the students’ horizons by exposing them to real life issues. This play would help to give the students a better worldview and make them better prepared to face the outside world. Especially since drama is a perfect means of communicating issues to the audience, they will be able to relate to and understand the essence of the problem via it.

This being Anuruddha’s directorial debut, he says that it’s been a lot of hard work, from interpretation, to editing, publicity and performance licenses, there’s been so many things he had to look into. In view of the young thespians, Anuruddha says that all of them are quite capable. This type of play will give the students an ideal opportunity to do justice to their talents. You just have to know how to bring out their best, he said. Many of them have a lot of potential, and even have the scope to outdo or be on par with some of the professional actors/actresses in the theatre scene at the moment.

Even the setting is perfect, as it can only accommodate a small audience, which won’t disrupt the intimatacy of the play. The feminist agenda, and how all the key characters are victims of their own respective circumstances are two points emphasised in the play, said Anuruddha.

In his attempt to tighten the play thus, increasing its impact, Anuruddha had to do quite a bit of editing by adding and extracting various parts, he said. Furthermore, as the play will be relatively brief, he hopes to run the play straight through without an intermission, so that the underlying message can be conveyed effectively. Overall though, the cast identified with the characters almost immediately and took to their roles like “ ducks to water,” but some found enacting the love scenes quite tough, he said.

So at 7.30 p.m. from February 25 – 27, at the Namel and Malini Punchi Theatre you can work out for yourself how much or little the mindset of society in general has evolved over time. Think you can handle seeing your life being enacted before your very eyes?

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