Ibsen's Women - The Discussion

Red Tape Theatre's panel, Ibsen's Women, was presented on Sunday, May 10, alongside our
gender-swapped adaptation of Enemy of the People.

Prof. Jacob Juntunen (UIC Dept of Theatre), began with Nora from A Doll's House, who abandons her husband and children. The revolutionary aspect of this may be lost in a time of 50% divorce rates but Nora's action was unthinkable at the time and caused fierce debate among the audiences.

Mr. Robert Scogin (Artistic Director, Shaw Chicago) compared Ghosts to a Greek Tragedy, citing Mrs. Alving as a modern Clytemnestra who kills her husband with her moralizing only to be punished by her children. Mrs. Alving's resignation to stay with her husband despite their incompatibility has also branded her as "Nora grown up."

Prof. Julie Ward (Loyola Dept of Philosophy) commented that this made Hedda Gabler into "Nora on steroids." Unhappy with her timid husband, but unwilling to submit to her immoral admirers she sabotages their lives then ends the life of life of herself and her unborn child with her fathers pistol.

Mr. Scogin argued that in Ibsen's time evil springs from boredom as society leaves his women with nothing to do. Prof. Ward countered with the heavy responsibilities Nora takes by running the finances of her household. Mr. Scogin agreed, but added that society left Nora no legal way to do so, forcing her into forgery. Ibsen's plays critique aspects of a society that does not allow one to make a moral choice.

When asked if these women are still relevant, Prof. Juntunen answered that the plays present
women who actively reject their socially prescribed roles. The plays still has the power to make husbands and wives very afraid.

Enemy of the People runs May 4-30, 2009
Our next panel, Green Night of Theatre, will be Sunday, May 24.
Tickets are available through our website!

Paul G. Miller
Season Dramaturge

Ibsen's Marriage

The Stockman’s marriage in Enemy of the People has its share of troubles but they are one of the healthiest couples in Henrik Ibsen’s canon. At today’s panel, Ibsen’s women, we will discuss the fraught relationships in A Dolls House, Ghosts and Hedda Gabler. Critics have enjoyed contrasting these plays to Ibsen’s own marriage.

Henrik Ibsen married Suzanna Thoreson in 1858, at age 30. His one time friend Martin Scheneekloth saw the marriage as a tragedy. In his letters about Ibsen he wrote:

“To find that one does not really love the woman one has married, that one’s requirements for a happy co-existence are so opposed to one’s wife’s that no reconciliation is possible, must be a desperate situation for a man, and that is Ibsen’s. He is a domineering character, egocentric and unbending, with a passionate masculinity and a curious admixture of personal cowardice, compulsively idealistic yet totally indifferent to expressing these ideals in his daily life… She is unwomanly, tactless, but a stable, hard character, a mixture of intelligence and stupidity, not deficient in feeling but lacking humility and feminine love. They can not find peace through love, so they wage war on each other, ruthlessly coldly, and yet she loves him, if only through their son, their poor son, whose fate is the saddest that could befall any child, to see divided what should be reconciled in him.

Whose is the fault if not the man? He took her from her father’s house, led her out into the strange world, and instead of devoting his life to finding some form of reconciliation he gives all his mind and passion to a demonic pursuit of literary fame. It is disturbing to hear him describe his plans to send his wife and child home so that he may work in peace abroad. He lacks the courage to pursue his career without abandoning his domestic responsibilities, to face up to the consequences of his ambition, to work incessantly to give her life fulfillment, to suffer and strive to educate his son. Thus he, who so loudly and brilliantly condemns the cravenness of our age, who in mighty poems proclaims the strength of human will, is himself a craven vacillating weakling. "

However their son Sigurd painted a very different picture. He saw his mother as Ibsen’s greatest champion who forced him to write in the many time she was tempted to give it all up. “The world can thank my mother that it has one bad painter the fewer and got a great writer instead.”

Henrik stayed with Suzannah till his death in 1906. While she encouraged the publishing of his work, she did her best to burn all his letters to her declaring their correspondence private. The letters that have survived are very affectionate. Ibsen referred to her by pet names such as his “cat” or “eagle.”

In 1914, a few days before her death, she spoke to an interviewer. “When we were young, many so-called friends came to Ibsen, but I sent them away… I had many unkind words for it, but I didn’t care. He had to have peace for his work… Ibsen had no steel in his character- but I gave it to him.”

Most likely glimpses of the truth remain in all his late plays of the joys and the sorrows, while the rest remains a mystery.

Our panel on Ibsen's Women is today, May 10, after the 2pm matinee.

Enemy of the People runs May 4-30, 2009.
Ticket are available through our website.

Paul G. Miller
Season Dramaturge

A Scottish "Enemy" in 1980

It’s the first Saturday after opening. Time to do the laundry, clean the dishes, and clean the apartment. I pop in a DVD for background noise. It’s a BBC adaptation of Enemy of the People buried in an Ibsen collection. I’ve put off watching it and it’s due back at the library soon. Turns out I’m in for a treat.

There’s Peter Stockman, speaking for a crowd in a large factory, about the board’s decision to bottle and sell the water from Scotland’s Baikie springs. As the crowd applauds, the mayors brother rolls his eyes. Then the mayor pushes a button and conveyor belt springs to life filled with bottles of poisoned spring water. As the line of bottles fills the camera the ABBA song “Money, Money, Money” starts to play on the soundtrack. I realize I’ve stumbled on a delightfully irreverent modern adaptation.

Broadcast in 1980 on the BBC, Maggie Allen’s adaptation sticks close to the structure of Ibsen’s original but steers towards comedy and rewrites the text in local dialect.

Dr. Stockman to the crowd: “Yeh kinnae be that stupid!”

Billing to Stockman: “Yer talkin’ like a bloody fascist!”

Horster to Petra: “Ach, ye kin buy spa water anywhere in the world, but
there’s very little truth on view.”

I was also pleased to see that Maggie Allen’s Stockman, like ours, considers moving to Canada. “The air is freshest and a chemist can get work!”

Red Tape Theatre’s Enemy of the People runs May 4-30, 2009
Tickets are available through our website.

Paul G. Miller

Season Dramaturge

Hedda's First Impressions

The protagonist of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler agrees to an unsuitable marriage, then destroys everyone in her path trying to get out. The premiere in 1891 was met with hostility by the critics who failed to understand Hedda's behaviour. Their sometimes hysterical responses mirrored a line in the play: "People don't do such things,"

Ibsen scholar Michael Meyer found insight in Gerhard Gran's review for Samtiden:

Gran: “It is a law, or anyway has until now been a law, that drama, in its present state of technical development, can only present comparatively simple characters… Everything that should make this curious being intelligible to us, her development, her secret thoughts, her half-sensed misgivings and all that vast region of the human mind which lies between the conscious and the unconscious – all this the dramatist can no more than indicate. For this reason, I think a novel about Hedda Gabler could be extremely interesting, while the play leaves us with a sense of emptiness and betrayal."

Meyer: "Gran’s remarks explain why people who accepted Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina and Dorothea Brooke wre baffled by [Ibsen's heroines] Ellida Wangel, Rebecca West and Hedda Gabler. Neither actors nor audiences, nor even those who bought the play in book form, were able to read between the lines of dialogue as we can today."

One of Ibsen's worst reviewed works went on to become his most produced among new generations of actors and audiences who wanted to "read between the lines."



I'll be hosting the panel on Ibsen's Women this Sunday, May 10 after the 2pm matinee.

Raven Theatre's Hedda Gabler runs May 3 - June 27, 2009

Red Tape Theatre's Enemy of the People runs May 4-30, 2009.


Paul G. Miller
Season Dramaturge

Augusto Boal 1931-2009

May 2, 2009 saw the passing of Brazilian director, writer and activist Augusto Boal.

His first book, Theatre of the Oppressed (1973), was the subject of disucssion at one of my first meetings at Red Tape Theatre.

Paul G. Miller
Season Dramaturge

Opening Night Artwork!

Congratulations to the cast and crew of Enemy of the People!

We run May 4-30, 2009.

Paul G. Miller

Season Dramaturge

Ibsen's Inspiration

Ibsen scholar Michael Meyer discusses the incidents that inspired the plot of Henrik Ibsen's Enemy of the People.

He reveals that the father of Ibsen's colleague was stoned and chased out of the town of Teiplitz after speaking up about an outbreak of cholera at their spa in the eighteen-thirties.

Ibsen was also in Norway in 1874 when chemist Harald Thaulow waged ware on the Christiana Steam Kitchens "for neglecting their duty towards the city's poor." The chairman and the crowd prevented him from speaking at their annual meeting. The newspaper account read:

THAULOW: "I won't cast my pearls into the sand. This is a damned insult being inflicted on a free people in a free society. Now I'll go! Stand in the dunce's corner and be ashamed of yourselves!"

Meanwhile in 2009, as swine flu sweeps the news and the poisoned water investigation in Crestwood, IL continues to unfold, Red Tape Theatre's production grows more topical by the day.

Enemy of the People runs May 4-30, 2009
Tickets are available through our website.

Paul G. Miller
Season Dramaturge

Meet the Cast! - Courtney Bennett

Part seven in a series of interviews with the cast of Enemy of the People at Red Tape Theatre.

Name: Courtney Bennett

Role: Dr. Tammy Stockman

Where are you from?

I was born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, and I went to college in a town near there. I lived very briefly in New York City, but I moved to Chicago in October 2007.

What is the first stage play you remember seeing?

My folks aren't very interested in plays or movies, so those weren't a very big part of my childhood. Once I showed an interest in acting, my mother took me to see a traveling production of Chicago. After that, I think she got me every possible piece of Chicago merchandise-- hats, posters, t-shirts, etc. Little did I know I would inhabit the city one day.

When/why did you start acting?

I was always driven to entertain. In elementary school I vied for the speaking parts in assemblies, and in high school, I began taking drama my freshman year. My first real part was at 14 as a munchkin in the school's production of The Wizard of Oz. After that I was hooked; I attended every drama tournament and auditioned for every play.

Tell us about your character in Enemy of the People.

Tammy is an idealist. She believes in people and their ability to make big decisions with ease. I think she is naive, but she believes so deeply in the greater good that she often is willing to break rules to make things happen. I admire her willingness to take risks for what she believes in and her appreciation of the world around her.

What's next for you?

I plan to go back to school this fall. I got into the MFA in Physical Theatre Acting program at the Accademia dell'Arte in Arezzo, Italy. The next couple years are going to be a blur of European cities, and hopefully I'll come back to the US with a broader mind and soul. After that I really want to teach acting for college. I can't wait to get started!

Enemy of the People runs May 4-30, 2009.

Tickets are available through our website!

Meet the Cast! - Kieran Kredell

Part six in a series of interviews with the cast of Enemy of the People at Red Tape Theatre Company.

Name: Kieran Kredell

Role: Patrick Stockman

Where are you from?

I was born and raised on the southern end of the New Jersey shore, in a town called Barnegat. But I went to school in Connecticut, and currently live in Ukrainian Village.

What is the first stage play you remember seeing?

Seriously? I'm not sure if I have an answer for this one. Does the Cecil S. Collins Elementary School's adaptation of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure count?

[Paul: It does indeed!]

When/why did you start acting?

My first performance was in eighth grade. It was the drama club's annual show: Krazy Kamp, a children's musical about rival summer camps. In retrospect, I'm sure it was charming. But at the time, I was convinced I was destined for bigger and better things. I started working at summerstock and community theaters in the area, and I guess the rest is history. I'm still not entirely sure why I started acting (besides the fact that I really really liked it), but it's grown to be a pretty important part of how I think about the world.

Tell us about your character in Enemy of the People

Patrick is Tammy and Peter's cousin (originally, Petra was the daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Stockmann). An openly liberal queer, he is somewhat of an outcast in Cherokee. A substitute teacher frustrated with the politics of his field, he firmly believes in the potential for education to create positive social change. Amidst the overwhelming lack of like-minded voices in town, he looks to Tammy for inspiration and guidance. To Patrick, she embodies the strength, determination, and selflessness required to be heard in such a stifling environment. And when the Sun.org was reinvented as a radical leftist publication, Patrick began to think the odds were turning in his favor

What's next for you?

I have been working for the past several months with About Face Youth Theatre's Outreach Tour, traveling to schools in the greater Chicago area (and nationwide) introducing kids to sex-positive sex-education, and encouraging adults to push their administrations to support similar efforts. We will continue touring throughout the school year. Also, I will be interning at Redmoon Theater, participating in several guerrilla street performances and helping to create spectacular things. And I'll be auditioning, of course, and looking for representation...

Enemy of the People runs May 4-30, 2009

Tickets are available through our website!

Meet the Cast! - April Pletcher Taylor

Part five in a series of interviews with the cast of Enemy of the People at Red Tape Theatre.

Name: April Pletcher Taylor

Role: Connie Allen, President of the Homeowners Association and Board President of The Sun.

Where are you from?

I’m originally from Niles, Michigan.

What is the first stage play you remember seeing?

I remember taking a class trip to Chicago to see Much Ado About Nothing when I was in elementary school.

When/why did you start acting?

I’ve possessed a fascination with acting since I was a child. A very shy and quiet person, acting and make believe provided a means for self expression. Also, I just plain loved the endless possibilities that existed on stage--still do.

Tell us about your character in Enemy of the People.

Connie Allen is an active board member in a number of community organizations. She has a great deal of pride in Cherokee and aims to protect this community from anything that may jeopardize its blooming prosperity. Experience has taught her that often times it’s not always what you say but rather how you say it that really counts, so she tries very hard to present any threatening issues in such a way that will prompt a remedy while at the same time not rocking the boat too much. Moderation is her motto and preferred method of handling opposition. However, when the stakes are high, moderation has been known to get thrown right out of the window....well, actually…it just gets placed on the window ledge and nudged off like a little bird…yes, that sounds much nicer.

What's next for you?

On June 1 I will be performing in Rubicon Theatre Project’s Becoming Ingrid as part of the Chicago DCA Theater Incubator Series. After that, who knows?

Enemy of the People runs May 4-30, 2009.

Tickets are available through our website!