Previous events at Centre for Ibsen Studies

2022

“A Doll’s House Reimagined”: Annual Ibsen Lecture 2022 with playwright Tanika Gupta (UK)

This year’s guest of honour for the Annual Ibsen Lecture is British playwright Tanika Gupta. Her adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is on the National Curriculum in UK secondary education.

Time and place: Dec. 15, 2022 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM, Ibsen Museum & Teater, Henrik Ibsens gate 26, 0255 Oslo

The event is taking place at the newly renovated Ibsen Museum & Teater. The museum is currently closed to the public, but will generously open its doors for this special event. Coffee will be served, and admission is free.

Tanika Gupta

Over the past 25 years, Tanika has written more than 25 stage plays that have been produced in major theatres across the UK and has written extensively for television and BBC Radio drama. Tanika’s play The Empress and her adaptation of A Doll’s House are on the National Curriculum in the UK for GSCE school examinations in higher education.

In-house Seminar: Ibsen, Adaptation, and the Question of Progress

Olivia Noble Gunn, Associate Professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington, will present her ongoing book project on Future Ghosts.

Time and place: Nov. 23, 2022 2:15 PM – 4:00 PM, Seminar room 4, Sophus Bugges hus

My current book project, Future Ghosts: Ibsen, Adaptation, and the Question of Progress, explores a particular archive of hauntology: twenty-first century adaptations of Henrik Ibsen’s major works in drama, film, performance, and the novel. In this talk, I focus on the concept of progress before turning to the example of Indian Arm (2105), an adaptation of Little Eyolf by Japanese Canadian playwright Hiro Kanagawa. I argue that Kanagawa’s adaptation conjures the hegemonic history of child-saving, its philosophies and policies of de- and re-homing children, across the span of the twentieth century (the century of the child and of death). Especially when read together, Little Eyolf and Indian Arm raise the specter of delinquency and the haunted grounds of the boarding school. Finally, I return to the concept of progress by considering how my approach to Ibsen in Future Ghosts might raise the specter of anachronism. What does it mean to use contemporary adaptations to revisit the past?

Olivia Noble Gunn is Associate Professor of Scandinavian Studies and the Sverre Arestad Endowed Chair in Norwegian Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her latest book is Empty Nurseries, Queer Occupants: Reproduction and the Future in Ibsen’s Late Plays (Routledge 2020).

Please note that this event will be live streamed on Zoom. If you wish to participate remotely, please register at this link no later than 22 November. A Zoom link will be provided to registered participants early on 23 November.

Special Screening of 'The Wild Duck'

The Centre for Ibsen Studies presents The Wild Duck (1963) introduced by Nora Ibsen—granddaughter of the filmmaker and great-great-grandchild of the dramatist.

Time and place: Nov. 9, 2022 5:00 PM – 7:30 PM, Auditorium 3, Sophus Bugges hus, Blindern

Tancred Ibsen's The Wild Duck was the first the first Ibsen adaptation in Norwegian film history and starred Wenche Foss (Gina Ekdal) and Henki Kolstad (Hjalmar Ekdal).

Nora Ibsen, who is a theater producer in her own right, will share previously unknown stories behind the scenes of her grandfather's classic Ibsen film

The event is open and free for students, staff, and other friends of the Centre for Ibsen Studies. Please sign up by sending an email in advance to:

thor.holt@ibsen.uio.no

The introduction will be held in English and the adaptation comes with subtitles.

Welcome to Blindern for a memorable film evening!

In-house Seminar: Ibsen's "Abnormal Women"

Eivind Tjønneland (University of Bergen) will present his recent book "Abnorme" kvinner. Henrik Ibsen og dekadansen ("Abnormal" Women. Henrik Ibsen and Decadence).

The event will be held in person (not streamed). You will find the room on the third floor of Georg Sverdrups hus, above Café Georg (not within the library itself).

Time and place: Oct. 18, 2022 2:15 PM – 4:00 PM, Undervisningsrom 1, Georg Sverdrups hus

Eivind Tjønneland is professor emeritus of Scandianvian Literature at the University of Bergen. For ten years he also taught History of Ideas at the University of Oslo. He has published extensively on Henrik Ibsen. Apart form a dozen articles and the book Ibsen og moderniteten (1993), he edited the two anthologies Gloria Amoris - Kjærlighetens Komedie 150 år (2012) on Love's Comedy and Henrik Ibsens Kongs-Emnerne - teater, historie og resepsjon (2020) on The Pretenders. Recently he published "Abnorme" kvinner - Henrik Ibsen og dekadansen (2022), about the contemporary reception of the women in Ibsen's plays 1890-1896. This book is the theme of today's seminar.

In-house Seminar: Ibsen the Seducer. Male Power at Play on Female Psyche. On Ibsen and the “Princesses”

Astrid Sæther (University of Oslo) will present her recent book I skyggen av Ibsen (In Ibsen's Shadow).

The event will be held in person. Zoom streaming will be provided, but registration is mandatory for remote attendance. A Zoom link will be sent on the day of the seminar.

Time and place: Sep. 15, 2022 2:15 PM – 4:00 PM, Seminar room 4, Sophus Bugges hus

During a decade (1889 – 1899) Ibsen successively established short, but intensive relations with four young women. They have been portrayed in biographies written by men as power seeking, greedy, vampires, like beings that sucked on Ibsen’s fame. A closer study shows that these women were not predators but victims. Who were the four “princesses”, as he named them? Can these relationships be analyzed through Kierkegaard’s character John the Seducer in Either / Or (1843)? This lecture, based on Astrid Sæther's recent book I skyggen av Ibsen, is a biographical contribution to Ibsen scholarship.

Astrid Sæther is an Associate Professor Emerita at the University of Oslo's Centre for Ibsen Studies. She was a Senior lecturer at the University of Copenhagen (1979-89), Associate Professor of Scandinavian Literature and Director of the Ibsen Center at the University of Oslo (1990 – 2015), as well as a Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley, Scandinavian Department (2013). She is the author or editor of several books and articles on Ibsen, among these: "Ibsen and Brandes" (2006), "Suzannah. Fru Ibsen" (2008), "The Biographical Ibsen" (2009), "Ibsen between Cultures" (2016), and "I skyggen av Ibsen" (2022).

IN HOUSE-SEMINAR DOUBLE BILL: Ibsen's Middle Ages / Roles in Ibsen's plays

Solenne Guyot (University of Strasbourg, France) and Paulo Ricardo Berton (Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil) will present their ongoing projects as guest researchers at the Centre for Ibsen Studies.

The event will be held in person. Zoom streaming will provided, but registration is mandatory for those attending on Zoom.

Time and place: Aug. 8, 2022 2:15 PM – 4:00 PM, Seminar room 210, Henrik Wergelands hus

Part I - Ibsen's Middle Ages (Solenne Guyot)

While Ibsen is considered the “father of modern drama”, the way he fabricated a certain vision of the Middle Ages in his plays has received little attention from posterity. Yet, Ibsen had devoted himself to the writing of medieval historical dramas at the beginning of his career, and references connected to the medieval world also appear in his later plays. By studying the presence of the Middle Ages in Ibsen’s works — and not only in the historical ones — the aim of this project is to reconsider the traditional categorisation of the dramatist’s production. The classification of his production into three distinct categories (historical/realist/psychological dramas) focuses on what differentiates Ibsen's plays. However, the project investigates how intertextuality between Ibsen’s plays and the Icelandic sagas, the Nordic ballads and the Germanic legends can be seen as an element of continuity throughout his production.

Part II - Roles in Ibsen's Plays (Paulo Ricardo Berton)

According to semiotician A. J. Greimas, there are four levels of manifestation of character: the actant, the role, the character itself and the actor. The intermediary function - the role - is a connector between the deepest structures, which exist only on an abstract level, and the finished character description, a complete creation, realized in the stage through its representation by the actor. This seminar will then propose six roles that Ibsen will repeatedly develop in his work: firstly a couple formed by a man and a woman, then a detonator that will shake the marital structure, and beyond these three, an old love, a son/daughter and a new love. These roles will be exemplified through some of the plays written by the Norwegian playwright.

Solenne Guyot is a first-year PhD student in Scandinavian Studies at the University of Strasbourg. She received a B.A. in Humanities, a M.A. in General and Comparative Literature and a M.A. in Medieval Studies. She currently teaches courses on European interculturality and Scandinavian literature for Bachelor’s students at the University of Strasbourg.

Paulo Ricardo Berton is an Associate Professor II of Literature (PPGLit/UFSC) and Dramatic Writing, Theater Direction and History and Theory of Drama and Theater (ART/UFSC), currently in post-doctoral leave at the Wiener Wortstätten (Vienna/Austria).

2020

Ibsen in Arabic

The Norwegian Embassy in Cairo has the pleasure to invite you to a webinar on Ibsen in Arabic.

Time and place: Dec. 14, 2020 4:00 PM–6:00 PM, ZOOM

On the occasion of the project “Ibsen in Translation” coming to an end, the Norwegian Embassy in Cairo wishes to celebrate the famous Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and shed some light on him and his work’s prominent place in Arabic, and especially Egyptian, society, literature and culture.

The “Ibsen in Translation” project has been led by the Centre of Ibsen Studies at the University of Oslo. It is a unique translation project where translators work together, exchanging experiences in the course of the translation work. The project aims to translate Henrik Ibsen's 12 contemporary dramas into 8 languages directly from Norwegian, including classical Arabic and Egyptian Arabic.

Throughout this webinar, we hope to discuss Ibsen in Arabic, both from a linguistic perspective, but also from a more societal and cultural point of view. To contribute to this discussion, we have the honour of having with us a distinguished set of panellists.

Program

17:00 - 17:05. Brief welcoming remarks by Ms Astrid Pettersen, Second Secretary, Norwegian Embassy in Cairo
17:05 - 17:20. Introduction by Dr Liyang Xia, translator and representative of the Center for Ibsen Studies, on the “Ibsen in Translation” project
17:20 - 17:40. Introduction by Ms Sherin Abdel Wahab and Ms Amal Rawash, Egyptian translators working with “Ibsen in Translation”
17:40 - 17:55. Introduction by Dr Mona Ibrahim Aly, Professor of English Literature at Cairo University, on her experience with Ibsen literature
17:55 - 18:10. Introduction by Dr Nora Amin, Egyptian theatre producer, director and actress who has staged three plays of Ibsen 18:10 - 19:00 Open discussion and comments from the audience

We encourage our guests in the audience to prepare comments for the second half of the webinar.

How to participate

Kindly indicate your interest to participate in this event by replying to this email (Nazif Nevine, email: nevine.nazif@mfa.no) before Saturday 12 December so that we can send you login information beforehand. We will be using Skype for Business for this webinar.

Organizer

The Norwegian Embassy in Cairo and The Centre for Ibsen Studies

The Annual Ibsen Lecture 2020: Decolonizing Ibsen

How has Ibsen been viewed, practiced and received in Africa and South Asia? Robert Malcolm McLaren (aka Robert Mshengu Kavanagh) and Sabiha Huq will discuss the topic of “Decolonizing Ibsen”.

Time and place: Dec. 10, 2020 9:00 AM–11:00 AM, Zoom

This year’s Annual Ibsen Lecture will be a discussion between Robert Malcolm McLaren (aka Robert Mshengu Kavanagh) and Sabiha Huq on the topic of "Decolonizing Ibsen".

Both McLaren and Huq have written extensively about theatre and politics in their respective cultures—Africa and South Asia. McLaren, as an active theatre practitioner himself, has devoted much of his life to helping young people in southern Africa to explore their own lives and cultivate independent thinking through theatre. His adaptations of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt and A Doll’s House toured in several countries in Africa as well as in Norway. Huq is an Ibsen scholar who received her doctoral degree from the Centre for Ibsen Studies in 2014. Her research has focused on South Asian Ibsen adaptations in various post-colonial contexts. Her latest book in the working is Ibsen on the Decolonised South Asian Stage: Traversing Texts and Contexts.

In their discussion, McLaren and Huq will touch upon how Ibsen has been viewed, practiced and received in Africa and South Asia, as well as their own practice and research in theatre. The discussion will be moderated by Associate Professor Liyang Xia from the Centre for Ibsen Studies. The audience will have opportunity to ask questions towards the end of the webinar.

Bios

About Robert Malcolm McLaren

Robert Malcolm McLaren (aka Robert Mshengu Kavanagh) is a fourth generation South African of Scottish descent. He was born in Durban, educated in Natal and currently lives in Zimbabwe. He graduated with Honours from the University of Cape Town and holds an M.Phil. from Oxford (Rhodes Scholarship) and a Ph.D. from Leeds. He has been an arts educator and theatre academic, practitioner and writer in South Africa, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, co-founding/chairing university theatre arts departments at Addis Ababa and Zimbabwe. He co-founded Zimbabwean arts education trust, CHIPAWO, and subsequently directed CHIPAWO World. He helped found the Zimbabwe Association of Theatre for Children and Young People (ZATCYP – ASSITEJ/IATA) and chaired the organisation for three years. CHIPAWO World was awarded an Ibsen Scholarship in 2011 for its project ‘Negotiating Ibsen in Southern Africa’.

In the 1970s he co-founded the non-racial South African theatre organisation, Experimental Theatre Workshop ’71. He has devised, directed, acted in or designed lighting for numerous plays in England, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia, including Journey to Yourself, an adaptation of Peer Gynt (2006), A Doll’s House (2008), The Most Wonderful Thing of All (2010-3). He also masterminded Zimbabwe’s commemoration of the Ibsen Centenary in 2006 and attended the ‘Ibsen through African Eyes’ Workshop in Lusaka (2010).

He has published numerous books and articles in a wide variety of international journals and wrote the Preface to Weaver Press’s edition of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (2007). He is fluent in English, Zulu, Shona and Amharic and has varying degrees of competence in Afrikaans, French, Italian, Xhosa and Sotho.

About Sabiha Huq

Sabiha Huq is Professor of English at Khulna University, Bangladesh. An MPhil and PhD from University of Oslo (2014), she is currently a member of the International Ibsen Committee. She holds keen interest in Cultural Studies, and her latest publication is included in Media Culture in Transnational Asia: Convergences and Divergences. In her forthcoming book The Mughal Aviary: Women’s writings in Pre-Modern India, Huq casts a neo-historicist perspective on the convergences between women’s limited freedom under Mughal patriarchy and their acquiring agency to express thoughts on state polity, religion, love, freedom, and identity. She is currently working on decolonized urban theatre spaces in South Asian countries, and the use of Ibsen in the decolonizing process. She is also involved with Education for Deprived Students (EDS) Bangladesh; the mission of the organization being the uplift of deprived sections of youth in Southern Bangladesh and affecting positive change in the lives of women of the region. Sabiha is also a translator and creative writer. Her latest short story “Refuge(e)” can be read at kitaab.org.

In-house webinar: Doubling in Nazi Era Ibsen Adaptations: Peer Gynt (1934) and Stützen der Gesellschaft (1935)

In-House webinar: Associate Professor Thor Holt (Centre for Ibsen Studies) will discuss how Nazi cinema (mis)used Ibsen in order to provide a positive source of orientation for German audiences.

Time and place: Nov. 13, 2020 5:00 PM–6:00 PM, Zoom

Here you can join the webinar: https://uio.zoom.us/j/61779551496

Henrik Ibsen was the second most frequently adapted author in Nazi cinema, surpassed only by German writer of homeland novels Ludwig Ganghofer. Most of these adaptations premiered in the mid-1930s—a period in film history that saw a marked decrease in Ibsen adaptations on a global scale: Fritz Wendhausen’s Peer Gynt (1934), Detlef Sierck’s Stützen der Gesellschaft (1935, and Hans Steinhoff’s Ein Volksfeind (1937).

One important reason why the Nazis appropriated Norwegian literature in general and Ibsen in specific, is found in their mission to restore an alleged lost ‘Nordic’ or ‘German’ identity. In 1933, for instance, publicist Eberhard Freidank wrote an article on the frantic call to ‘hyper-Nordify’ Germany by spiritual and cultural means. Nazi ideologues projected onto the Nordic man an ideal self in terms of a positive image. This perceived thus represented an antidote to the dark double of the “Jew.” Against this backdrop, Ibsen was “adopted” as a German writer, his plays appropriated in line with Nazi ideology, and the Norwegian settings of the film adaptations served as Germany’s displaced doubles.

In this in-house seminar, Thor Holt will present how Nazi cinema (mis)used Ibsen in order to provide a positive source of orientation for German audiences. One key to an understanding of the ideological labor of these Ibsen adaptations is found in the specific modalities of othering that came into play when the Nazi era Ibsen adaptations screened in front of audiences in the Third Reich. The settings of these Ibsen adaptations gradually blurred the boundaries between Norway and Germany in films that anticipated the annexation of Norway and supported this alleged homecoming as a driving force in the Nazi worldview.

Thor Holt obtained his PhD from the University of Oslo in January 2020. He is currently associate professor at the Centre for Ibsen Studies

Webinar: The Greatest Event in A Doll’s Life – Who are the “Noras” in today’s China?

In-house Webinar: Associate Professor Liyang Xia (Centre for Ibsen Studies) will have a conversation with some of the artists involved in the theatre piece The Greatest Event in a Doll’s Life and discuss topics such as the creative process, the societal impact, and the controversies of this project.

Time and place: May 28, 2020 10:00 AM–11:30 AM, Online webinar

How you may join the lecture

Please use the zoom link: https://uio.zoom.us/j/63524060505

About the webinar

In 2019, a group of four Shanghai-based women in their late twenties and early thirties created a Chinese/English bilingual performance called The Greatest Event in a Doll’s Life. This project merges concepts from Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879) and Chinese literary master Hu Shi’s The Greatest Event in Life (1919), the latter being inspired by the former. The Chinese name of this production—Sheng Nü Zhi Jia (Home of “Leftover Women”)—points to the focal issue that the artists hope to address: the phenomenon of a state-sanctioned propaganda to pressure Chinese women over the age of 25 into marriage and motherhood.

Guo Yangyang, Lelia TahaBurt, Lin Cuixi and Selena Lu, being both creators and performers of the project, tell their personal stories about their relationship to marriage, family, and womanhood through this theatre piece. Their project was the winner of Ibsen Scholarship in 2019 for having the ambition to “become a revolutionary feminist manifesto of our time”.

About LIN Cuixi

LIN Cuixi is contemporary theatre maker, performer and a former computer programmer. With a special interest in gender narratives and human-technology relationship, she makes evocative performances through cross-disciplinary and collaborative processes. Recent works include 'The Greatest Event in a Dolls' Life', 'Annata', 'cybercafe' and ‘SOUP’ (McaM Shanghai/Wuzhen International Theatre Festival, 2018).

About Fabrizio Massini

Fabrizio Massini was starting off as performer and director in Florence, Fabrizio embarked on a sinological career in 2002 with a BA in Intercultural Studies from the University of Florence. He furthered his studies at the University of London (SOAS) with an MA in Chinese Theatre and Film, and then in Beijing, with a research residency at the Central Academy of Drama. Based in China between 2009-2019, Fabrizio is active as performing arts producer, curator and dramaturg. He collaborated with several European and Chinese organizations including Beijing Fringe Festival, Wuzhen Theatre Festival, Guangzhou Dance Festival, Odin Teatret (Denmark), Fabbrica Europa (Italy). Fabrizio has been Artistic Director at Ibsen International (2016-2019) where he curated and managed the Ibsen in China program. Fabrizio also regularly works as artistic consultant; he gave guest lectures at institutions including the Danish National School of Performing Arts, National Theatre Company of China, Shanghai Theatre Academy and others.

About Lelia TahaBurt

Lelia TahaBurt is an Egyptian-American intercultural theatre artist based in Shanghai, China. She works as an actor, director, producer, and writer, as well as having a background in music and mathematics. Lelia’s most recent project, sheng女之家, was the first project from China to win the Ibsen Awards Scholarship, and was premiered in December 2019 at the Ming Contemporary Art Museum. She is also a founding member of 盘上海 PAN Shanghai, an intercultural arts incubation group dedicated to promoting collaborations and new works in Shanghai and beyond. From 2015-17, Lelia was the founding artistic director of One World Theatre in Shanghai, a group dedicated to presenting fresh and seldom heard voices from around the world to the Shanghai community. She produced and curated 11 different performances of new and modern scripts during this time. She has also worked in theatres large and small in both China and Washington, DC, from Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company to the Beijing National Theatre. Lelia graduated from the Shanghai Theatre Academy and Dartmouth College.

About Selena Lü

Selena Lü is Theatre director and deviser, co-founder of _ao_ao_ing ensemble. Trained with psychological imaginations and a disciple of Carl Jung, Selena weaves together verbatim materials and literary sources to construct metaphorical narratives that empower and transcend everyday experience. She works with pedestrians a lot, aspiring to spread theatre-making process as a means for self-discovery, community building, social documentation and all possibilities of real-time changes.

Independent projects including: “Period Pain Monologues” (solo and forum theatre, 2015, Helsinki, Beijing); “The Way to Walden” (documentary theatre with students exiled from a bankrupt art college, 2015-18, Beijing); “Quiet” (documentary theatre with significant others of MH370, 2016, Beijing); “No Time Gu” (Chinese New Writing, 17, London); “You are my water.” (Live art, 2018, Shanghai, Wuzhen); Ensemble projects including: “Tourists Like Us” (Audio Tour series, 2018-, Shanghai, Hangzhou), “Annata: Not A Real Drag Show” (2019, shanghai).

About Yangyang GUO

Yangyang GUO was born in Beijing and grew up in the US. After graduating from Duke University, she worked in investment banking at Morgan Stanley in NYC but left the finance world to pursue her passion for the performing arts. She has performed in theatres across New York, Beijing, and Shanghai, and is committed to telling stories from unique perspectives and under-represented voices.

There will be time for question and answer for the webinar audience.

Welcome to the webinar!

Webinar: The Racialization of Gerd in Ibsen’s "Brand"

In-house Webinar: Professor Ellen Rees about the significance of the racialized status of the character Gerd in Ibsen’s Brand, the dramatic poem that launched his literary career in 1866. This lecture will be held as a webinar because of the coronavirus.

Time and place: May 15, 2020 2:15 PM–4:00 PM, Zoom

How you may join the lecture

https://uio.zoom.us/j/63211303060 Meeting ID: 632 1130 3060

About the webinar

Professor Ellen Rees explores the significance of the racialized status of the character Gerd in Ibsen’s "Brand", the dramatic poem that launched his literary career in 1866.

Gerd and the play’s protagonist are widely recognized as having a “mysterious sibling relationship,” but why does Ibsen complicate this family relationship by revealing her status as half Roma (or “Tater”) in the fourth act? Why have nearly all scholars ignored Gerd’s racialized status? Why is Gerd’s ethnicity so often erased in the casting of stage productions? Ibsen wrote "Brand" at a time when official policies concerning minoritized groups were becoming increasingly oppressive in Norway. The webinar will explore how Ibsen engaged with, perpetuated, and undermined stereotypes regarding one of Europe’s oldest and most unfairly vilified ethnic groups.

Welcome to the webinar!

Webinar: "Et dukkehjem" in Slovenian

In-house Webinar: Guest lecture by assistant professor Marija Zlatnar Moe about translating drama between peripheral languages - translating Ibsen into Slovenian. This guest lecture will be held as a webinar, as the first scheduled event was canceled because of the coronavirus.

Time: Apr. 2, 2020 2:15 PM–4:00 PM

How you may join the lecture

Connect to the webinar (Zoom) on and use the password: 070492.

Translation of peripherical languages

Translation between peripheral languages has its particularities, and translating drama even more so.

- I will touch upon particularities in connection with drama translation from Norwegian (bokmål) into Slovene, and present the first findings from my research on the five available translations of Ibsen's "Et dukkehjem" in Slovene, which appeared between 1892 and 2016. Three of them are indirect translations, probably via German, and only one has so far been published in a book. "Et dukkehjem" is, however, considered a classic in Slovenia and a part of the secondary school literary curriculum, which would probably warrant a new modern translation of the play for use in schools, says Zlatnar Moe.

About Maria Zlatnar Moe

Maria Zlatnar Moe is assistant professor at the faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. This spring she is a guest researcher at the Centre for Ibsen Studies.

Assitant professor Moe works at the Department of translation at Universitet of Ljubljana where she teaches general translation courses from English into Slovene at the BA level, literary translation and translation for arts and humanities at the MA level. Her research is focused mainly on literary translation with a focus on translation between peripheral/minor languages, drama (re)translation, the ideological issues of translation, translation of sacred texts and translation didactics.

She also works as a literary translator from English and Norwegian into Slovene. Among her recent publications, Center and Periphery: Power relations in the world of translation (with Tanja Žigon and Tamara Mikolič Južnič). Ljubljana: Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete, 2019.

Welcome to the webinar!

In-House Seminar with Olivia N. Gunn

"Ibsen and the "Nanny Chapter": Women's Labor in the Late Plays"

Time and place: Feb. 11, 2020 2:15 PM–4:00 PM, seminar room 1, P.A Munchs hus

Who is the proper occupant of the nursery? The obvious answer is the child, and not an archive, a seductive troll-princess, or poor fosterlings. Nevertheless, characters in "Hedda Gabler", "The Master Builder", and "Little Eyolf" intend to host these improper occupants in their children’s rooms. Dr. Gunn calls these dramas ‘the empty nursery plays’ because they all describe rooms intended for offspring, as well as characters’ plans for refilling that space.

One might expect nurseries to provide an ideal setting for a realist playwright to dramatize contemporary problems. Rather than mattering to Ibsen in terms of naturalist detail or explicit social critique, however, they are reserved for the maintenance of characters’ fears and expectations concerning the future. Empty Nurseries, Queer Occupants intervenes in scholarly debates in child studies by arguing that the empty bourgeois nursery is a better symbol for innocence than the child. Here, ‘emptiness’ refers to the common construction of the child as blank and latent. In Ibsen, the child is also doomed or deceased, and thus essentially absent, but nurseries persist as spaces of memorialization and potential alike.

Nurseries also gesture toward the domains of childhood and women’s labor, from birth to domestic service. ‘Bourgeois nursery’ points to the classed construction of innocence and to the more materialist aspects of this book, which inform our understanding of domesticity and family in the West and uncover a set of reproductive connotations broader than ‘the innocent child’ can convey.

About Olivia Noble Gunn

Olivia Noble Gunn is Assistant Professor and the Sverre Arestad Endowed Chair in Norwegian Studies in the Department of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her research interests include Norwegian literature and culture after 1880, comparative literature, performance studies, feminism, critical race theory, and queer theory. She is motivated by big questions about morality, propriety, and the limits of living and thinking. Olivia has published research on the dramas of Henrik Ibsen and figures of the child; on constructions of the family; and on class, gender, and racialization in Norwegian literature and film.

Her teaching interests range from the modernist Norwegian novel to representations of sexuality in the Nordic countries. She is currently serving on the MLA Executive Committee for the Forum CLCS Nordic and as the President of the Ibsen Society of America. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Olivia enjoys maintaining connections with Scandinavian American communities on the west coast through public facing talks.

2019

Internationally Acclaimed Dramatist to Oslo: Annual Ibsen Lecture 2019

Samuel Adamson (UK) is one of the world’s leading Ibsen adaptors. He will be visiting Oslo to discuss his latest play Wife (2019), inspired by A Doll’s House.

Time and place: Nov. 21, 2019 6:00 PM–8:00 PM, National Library, Store Auditorium on 1st floor

“A rousing look at 60 years of sexual identity.” -Michael Billington, The Guardian

“This is the most important adaptation of A Doll’s House I have come across in recent years.” -Julie Holledge, Professor, Centre for Ibsen Studies

The Centre for Ibsen Studies proudly presents an evening with Samuel Adamson at the Annual Ibsen Lecture on 21 November at the National Library. Adamson has previously reworked Ibsen’s "A Doll’s House" (2003), "Pillars of the Community" (2005) and "Little Eyolf" (Mrs. Affleck, 2009); the last two were commissioned by the Royal National Theatre in London. "Samuel Adamson’s exciting new play explores the evolving institution of marriage. Sam has had a long relationship with Ibsen. We are delighted to have him in Oslo in order to discuss the disconcerting and surprising aspects of Ibsen’s works that are made relevant again and again by dramatists like him," says Liyang Xia, Acting Head of the Centre for Ibsen Studies.

The Annual Ibsen Lecture includes an exclusive discussion between Adamson and Xia. It will also feature a special reading of scenes from Wife by actors Erik A. Schjerven, Amalie Krogh and Veronika Smit.

In "Wife", Adamson expands Ibsen’s narrative to explore the power relations in same-sex relationships, giving a new twist to the ever-growing interpretations of Ibsen’s most infamous ending. “The great quality of his play is that it shows we are still waiting for the miracle promised at the end of "A Doll’s House" and that the quest for the ideal continues,” The Guardian wrote after the play’s premiere in London earlier this year.

Samuel Adamson is the winner of "Whatsonstage Theatregoers’ Choice Best New Play Award 2008" and "Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2014".

The Annual Ibsen Lecture is free and open to the public. Previous speakers have included Terry Eagleton (UK), Thomas Ostermeier (Germany) and Joan Templeton (US).

In-house seminar 31. October - Playing Hjørdis Today with Kjersti Tveterås

Welcome to a new In-house seminar at the Centre for Ibsen Studies!

Time and place: Oct. 31, 2019 2:15 PM–4:00 PM, Seminarrom 210, Henrik Wergelands hus

Kjersti Tveterås is an actress at Nationaltheatret in Oslo and has made a name for herself for her interpretation of Hjørdis in Ibsen's "The Vikings at Helgeland" (1858), which has run at Nationaltheatret in the last two seasons and recently featured as a guest performance at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

During the seminar, Tveterås will dialogue with Giuliano D'Amico and students at the Centre for Ibsen Studies, and will speak about her experience about playing Hjørdis more than 160 years since the character was conceived. How to make such a character relevant today? What to emphasize about her personality? What are the challenges in playing such a complex figure?

The seminar will be in English and is open to everyone.

About Kjersti Tveterås

Kjersti Tveterås graduated from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2012. She made her debut at Trondheim's Trøndelagsteater, before she moved to Nationaltheatret in 2015. She has performed in, among others, Luigi Pirandello's "Six characters in search of an author" and Henrik Ibsen's adaptation "Vildanden + En folkefiende – Enemy of the Duck". She is currently playing the main role in "Alice i vidunderland", an adaptation of Lewis Carroll's novel.

Conference 2019: The Golden Age of Norwegian Literature and the German Book Industry

New international conference coming up! The conference The Golden Age of Norwegian Literature and the German Book Industry will take place at the University of Frankfurt on 14-15 October. Ibsen (and the Ibsen Centre) will be represented by a fair number of papers.

Time and place: Oct. 14, 2019–Oct. 15, 2019, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Campus Westend, Norbert-Wollheim-Platz 1, Seminarhaus 5.101

Programme

Monday, October 14th

12:15 – 13:45 Methodological perspectives

Espen Børdahl (Frankfurt) and Giuliano D’Amico (Oslo): Welcome, Introduction and Practical Information
Tore Rem (Oslo): Ibsen’s Re-sources of the Periphery
Jens-Morten Hanssen (Oslo): Bjørnson, Ibsen, and Biblio-graphic Data Analysis

14:15 – 15:45 Ibsen as book in Germany

Narve Fulsås (Tromsø): S. Fischer and Henrik Ibsen 1887 – 1904: Literary Business in a Transnational Copyright Regime
Ruth Schor (Jerusalem): Ibsen Book Clubs and Other Secrets: The Influence of Collective Reading Experien-ces on the Dissemination of Ibsen in Book Form
Joachim Grage (Freiburg): Early German Books on Henrik Ibsen, 1882-1910

Tuesday, October 15th

10:15 – 11:45 Reception and translation

Marlene Hastenplug (Frank-furt): Scandinavian Literature on the German Book Market from the Perspective of a Translator – Mathilde Mann (1859 – 1925)
Linnea Buerskogen (Trond-heim): Ibsen’s Ghosts in the Early German Translations
Giuliano D’Amico (Oslo): Felix Bloch Erben and the Marke-ting of Ibsen’s plays in Europe

12:45 – 13:45 Close and distant readings

Thomas Mohnike (Strasbourg): Scandinavian Literature and the Cultures in French Around 1900. Distant and Close Readings on the French Reception of the Scandinavian Modern Breakthrough
Monica Wenusch (Wien): «Jeg vil grufuldt gjerne være europeisk.» Arne Garborg – an Exceptional Representative of Norwegian Literature on the German Book Market at the Turn of the 20th Century

14:15 – 15:45 Ibsen in Germany between philosophy and adaptation

Klaus Müller-Wille (Zürich): The Architecture of the Book. The Manifold Facades of Ibsen’s Byggmester Solness
Thor Holt (Oslo): Re-Politicising Ibsen: Film Adaptions in the Third Reich

Organisers

Espen Børdahl (ebordahl@em.uni-frankfurt.de), Giuliano D'Amico (giuliano.damico@ibsen.uio.no)

Ibsen’s contemporary dramas in Hindi

Astri Ghosh presents her twelve translations of Ibsen’s works into Hindi. Her work is part of the larger project Ibsen in Translation.

Time and place: Oct. 11, 2019 2:00 PM–3:00 PM, Store Møtesal, Georg Sverdrup’s House

Astri Ghosh’s presentation «The transfer of ideal claims: Ibsen’s contemporary drama in Hindi» will be followed by a panel discussion.

Her translations have already been put to use in Indian cultural institutions:

Four of Ghosh’s translations are listed on the curriculum of The National School of Drama in Delhi.
Ghosh’s translation of “An Enemy of the People” was used when the play was performed at the Sri Ram Centre in New Delhi, where it ran for several weeks.
“A Doll’s House” was staged at the India International Centre together with readings of “Ghosts” in both Hindu and Norwegian.
In Mumbai, there were readings of “When We Dead Awaken” at Sophia Auditorium and of “Ghosts” and Ibsen’s letters at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, NCPA.
Students at Hyderabad University staged a performance of “Ghosts” with Anuradha Kapoor as director.

The project Ibsen in Translation

Over the past ten years, eight translators have met regularly to discuss the work of translating twelve of Henrik Ibsen’s dramas: The Pillars of Society, A Doll’s House, Ghosts, Enemy of the People, The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm, The Lady from the Sea, Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder, Little Eyolf, John Gabriel Borkman, and When We Dead Awaken.

The dramas are being translated into eight languages; Modern Egyptian, Classical Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, Farsi, Russian, Spanish, and Hindi.

Altogether, the project will result in almost one hundred translations. Ibsen in Translation is funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and NORLA.

Norwegian premiere of Douglas Sirk’s Pillars of Society (1935)

The Centre for Ibsen Studies and Cinemateket presents a special screening based on Ibsen’s Pillars of Society by one of the true masters of cinema.

Time and place: Oct. 8, 2019 6:00 PM, Cinemateket, Dronningens gate 16, Oslo

“The Ibsen play is old-fashioned in structure. It needed adapting.” – Douglas Sirk

Event registration

Free for students and staff at UiO. Registration at: thor.holt@ibsen.uio.no

For those of you not affiliated with UiO, please buy tickets via cinemateket.no

Ibsen on screen in nazi Germany

Pillars of Society (Stützen der Gesellschaft) was produced in Nazi Germany in 1935 and impressed the film fanatics Hitler and Goebbels. The film, however, has been discussed as subversive to the pressures of Nazi ideology; director Detlef Sierck (Douglas Sirk) described his Ibsen film as a film aesthetic breakthrough in the acclaimed book Sirk on Sirk (1971). Detlef Sierck changed his name to Dougals Sirk after he emigrated to California in 1939. Before he left the Third Reich, Sierck made some the best films in Nazi cinema and turned Swedish actor Zarah Leander into a superstar. His melodramas, perhaps most notably La Habanera (1937) for Ufa under Hitler and Imitation of Life for Universal under Eisenhower, have been hailed as subversive masterpieces—and have inspired some of the most influential directors in film history. “I have seen six films by Douglas Sirk. Among them were the most beautiful in the world,” Rainer Werner Fassbinder once said.

With Pillars of Society, Sierck/Sirk made a film that both confirms and opposes Nazi ideology. Heinrich George, known as the foreman of the Heart Machine in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) and Franz Biberkopf in Phil Jutzi’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (1931), plays the main role as consul Bernick.

Introduction before and discussion after the film

The film will be introduced by Thor Holt from the Centre for Ibsen Studies. Holt has written a PhD dissertation on film adaptations of Ibsen in the Third Reich. After the screening, he will be joined by actor Julie Støp Husby, who played Dina Dorf in Riksteatret/Nationaltheatret’s Pillars of Society in 2016, and Eirik Frisvold Hanssen, head of the film section at the National Library of Norway.

Both the introduction and the debate will be held in English. The film will be screened with English subtitles.

Film details

Running time: 1 hour 21 minutes (81 minutes)
Produced: Germany 1935
Directed by: Detlef Sierck (Douglas Sirk)
Language: German
Subtitles: English
Age limit: 12 years
Format: 35mm

Organizer

Centre for Ibsen Studies in cooperation with Cinemateket

In-house seminar: Forgotten female playwrights

Welcome to the autumn's second In-house seminar at the Centre for Ibsen Studies!

Time and place: Sep. 26, 2019 2:00 PM–4:00 PM, Sophus Bugges hus, seminarrom 4, Blindern Campus, University of Oslo

This guest lecture will focus on forgotten female playwrights from about 1870 to 1910. Lene Therese Teigen will present the DESK-project (2010-2013), in which she and her collaborators discovered, reread and presented the plays to an audience. Thoughts on structure and content in the plays of some of these playwrights will be presented. She will also reflect upon women’s roles in Norwegian society in the period. Welcome!

About Lene Therese Teigen

Lene Therese Teigen is a writer-director, based in Oslo. She was educated at the University in Bergen with a major in theatre studies, specializing in dramaturgy and directing, and has professor competence in playwriting. Her plays are being produced in Norway and abroad, sometimes with herself as director. She has published three novels and an anthology on drama history in addition to her plays. Integration of academic research with artistic works is central to her production. As a playwright she creates texts with several equal characters, and her works are marked by a special focus on gender awareness and equality.

Ibsen in Weimar Cinema

Centre for Ibsen Studies announces the first ever cinema screening of Victor Barnowsky’s Peer Gynt (1919) in Norway. The film will be introduced by Thor Holt from the Centre for Ibsen Studies. A discussion will follow after the screening.

Time and place: Sep. 16, 2019 7:00 PM, Oslo 16 (earlier: Stenersen Museum), Munkedamsveien 15, Oslo

Event registration

Entrance: Free

About the film

Peer Gynt (1919) was produced before, but premiered after Germany’s military and moral defeat in World War I. The famous theater director Victor Barnowsky teamed up with star producer Richard Oswald in order to turn the most popular Ibsen play in Germany into a silent film. Some of the top stars in what should be known as Weimar cinema joined them. Conrad Veidt (a strange passenger and the button-moulder) soon performed the iconic role as the somnambulist in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). Ilka Grüning (mother Aase) is perhaps most famous for her role in Casablanca (1942).

Barnowsky’s Ibsen adaptation was originally launched in two parts: Peer Gynts Jugend og Peer Gynts Wanderjahre und Tod. «Peer Gynt surpasses the so-called average production by far, and it will find a grateful audience. Not to mention that it will become a box-office hit anyway because of its world-famous title,» critic B. von Joachim predicted in Der Film in April 1919. What did the German audience see in 1919 that we cannot see or grasp today? Peer Gynt misfired both commercially and ideologically; Barnowsky never made a film again.

Peer Gynt (1919) was found by EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam—the national, Dutch film archive. A couple of years ago, a new digital restoration from the original nitrate copy was carried out by the National Library of Norway. The first public screening of the film was at the National Library in 2017. Peer Gynt is screened at a cinema (in DCP quality) for the first time at Oslo16 this Monday.

The National Library has translated the Dutch intertitles into English. Thanks to Beta Film for permission to screen the film.

The exclusive screening is made possible in cooperation with the National Library of Norway and the film centre Oslo16.

Film details

Running time: 58 minutes
Original title: Peer Gynts Jugend and Peer Gynts Wanderjahre und Tod
Produced: Germany, 1918
Directed by: Victor Barnowsky
Text: English
Format: DCP

Organizer

Centre for Ibsen Studies in cooperation with Oslo16 and the National Library of Norway

In-house seminar: Tracts, Tragedy, and Trolls. Ibsen in the USA

Welcome to the autumn's first In-house seminar at the Centre for Ibsen Studies!

Time and place: Aug. 28, 2019 2:15 PM–4:00 PM, Seminar room 210, Henrik Wergelands Hus, Blindern Campus

Dean Krouk, Assistant Professor of Nordic Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will lecture on "Tracts, Tragedy, and Trolls: Some Thoughts on the History of Ibsen in the United States".

Is there an American version of Ibsen? Not really, but this talk will discuss some telling moments in the history of the reception and interpretation of Ibsen in the US, from the early, non-English-language engagements to midcentury figures such as Arthur Miller and Eva Le Gallienne to the recent explosion of interest in “An Enemy of the People.”

Entrance is free and everyone is welcome. Even if you, just as Marilyn, have only read Arthur Miller's version of "An Enemy of the People"...

Staging the Nineteenth Century: Ibsen, Hegel, Nietzsche

Kristin Gjesdal (Temple University, USA).

Time and place: Apr. 26, 2019 1:00 PM–2:00 PM, Seminarrom 7, P.A. Munchs hus, 1. etg

Henrik Ibsen’s work has long fascinated philosophically-minded readers. From Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud to Theodor W. Adorno and Stanley Cavell, philosophers have argued that Ibsen’s work raises questions of profound intellectual value. Less attention, though, has been given to Ibsen’s philosophical orientation. As part of a larger European movement to reinvent drama, Ibsen and his fellow playwrights turned to the philosophy of their time. It should come as no surprise that this group took a special interest in modern philosophy of drama. Hand in hand with the institution of the modern theater, philosophy of drama developed in the work of philosophers such as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Johann Gottfried Herder, but found its mature form, in Ibsen’s own time, in the works of G. W. F. Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Focusing on the work of Henrik Ibsen, I explore and actualize the relationship between philosophy and drama in the Nineteenth Century—not by suggesting that either philosophy or drama should have the upper hand, but by indicating how a sustained dialogue between them can bring out the best in both.

In-house seminar: Ibsen’s reception in China

Time and place: Mar. 27, 2019 12:15 PM–1:30 PM, seminar room 6, PA Munchs hus, Blindern Campus, University of Oslo

Liyang Xia.

The history of Ibsen’s reception in China goes back to the early twentieth century, when China looked to the West for models of modernization. During the time of China’s May Fourth Movement, or New Culture Movement (1910s-1920s), Chinese intellectuals who received Western education played important roles in introducing ideas such as Western science and democracy to the Chinese population. Many of these intellectuals were famous Ibsenites. Their understandings of how China should relate to the West did not always agree with each other. And yet the diversity of discourse on the relationship between Ibsen and Chinese modernization has been lost in both China’s official history and scholarly enquiries. Rather, Ibsen is presented as part of a unified effort to modernize China in the early part of the twentieth century. In Liyang’s lecture, she will talk about how the unity in the understanding and usage of Ibsen – at the time when he was first introduced to China – is an invention rather than a fact, while a more accurate understanding is far more complex.

Liyang Xia has a PhD degree in Ibsen Studies from University of Oslo. Her current projects include remapping Ibsen’s early reception in China, re-translating all of Ibsen’s works into Chinese, and running theatre workshops on Ibsen’s plays.

In-house seminar: On the Spanish reception of A Doll's House (1890-2010s)

Iris Muñiz (University of Oslo).

Time and place: Mar. 19, 2019 2:15 PM–4:00 PM, seminar room 3, PA Munchs hus, Blindern Campus, University of Oslo

About "A Doll’s House"

"A Doll’s House" is arguably Ibsen’s most popular play in the world – it is too, by far, his most popular play in the Hispanic world, both in terms of theatrical events and published translations.

First published in Spanish in 1892, the play came to represent not only Ibsen as an author, but also the entire Nordic literature and the supposed Nordic national character, and, in parallel, it was often used as a symbol for the female emancipation movement. Stereotypical ideas about Nordic character and its relation to feminist movement, in contrast with the national image of Spanishness have accompanied almost every Spanish-language reception event ever since.

Aboute this lecture

In her lecture, Iris Muñiz will provide an overview of how the play was received throughout the last century, with an emphasis on (a) the translation history of the play; (b) the early Spanish-speaking film adaptations; (c) how Francoist anti-feminist ideology spurred theatrical adaptations; and (d) why María and Gregorio Martínez Sierra may be considered the most important mediators of the play in Spain.

This presentation builds on Muñiz’ dissertation "A Doll’s House of their own", defended last autumn in the University of Oslo, as well as on several of her published and unpublished articles about other aspects of the Spanish-speaking reception of Ibsen. While this presentation is fundamentally focused on Spain, it also includes some aspects of the Latin-American reception.

Iris Muñiz obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Oslo in November 2018. She is currently a guest researcher at the Centre for Ibsen Studies.

2018

Esotericism and the Humanities

A joint workshop by IKOS and the Centre for Ibsen Studies at the University of Oslo

Time and place: Dec. 13, 2018 12:00 PM–Dec. 14, 2018 2:30 PM, Room 389, PA Munchs hus

Abstract

What happens when a scholar in the humanities, be it literature, art, music, anthropology, history or religious studies finds esoteric elements in his/her object of research?

Which strategies and methodologies are advisable in order to study how esoteric currents relate to the exoteric world outside and how their specificity intersect with the research aims, scopes and traditions of other disciplines? This interdisciplinary workshop aims at gathering scholars within different research fields, who have been occupied with case studies that have touched upon the questions above.

Following its infancy in the 1960s, in the last three decades the academic study of Western esotericism has flourished as an independent branch of religious studies. However, the methodological aspects of how this field of study intersects with other disciplines, have not yet been studied thoroughly.

This workshop aims to start a discussion in order to develop conceptual tools and methodological strategies both for scholars in the humanities who encounter Western esotericism in their research, and for scholars of Western esotericism interested in expanding their research scope. The workshop will be led by a literary scholar (Giuliano D’Amico) and a historian of religion (Cecilie Endresen) at the University of Oslo, and gathers scholars from Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Sweden.

The expertise and the affiliations of this group, ranging from Ibsen to Islamic Studies, from the Theory of Science to Popular Spiritism, from Film Studies to Art History, are chosen strategically. The workshop, in fact, is intended as a first step towards a future application for workshop grants from The Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (NOS-HS).

Program

Thursday 13 December (Room 389, PA Munchs hus, Blindern)

12.00-13.00 LUNCH for the speakers
13.00-13.15 Cecilie Endresen and Giuliano D’Amico (University of Oslo): Introduction
13.15-14.00 Olav Hammer (University of Southern Denmark): “Esotericism and the literature of mysticism”
14.00-14.45 Benedikt Hjartarson (University of Iceland): “Edifying Form: On the Literary Esotericism of Þórbergur Þórðarson”
14.45-15.00 PAUSE
15.00-15.45 Marja Lahelma (University of Helsinki): “Artists as producers and mediators of esoteric knowledge”
15.45-16.30 Cecilie Endresen (University of Oslo): “Albanian esotericism, pseudo-linguistics and new religious authorities”
18.30 DINNER for the speakers

Friday 14 December (Room 389, PA Munchs hus, Blindern)

9.00-9.45 Anne Kalvig (University of Stavanger): “Contemporary, spiritual stuff and how to label and study it as a part of culture”
9.45-10.30 Henrik Johnsson (University of Tromsø): “Occult Fiction Considered as a Literary Genre”
10.30-10.45 PAUSE
10.45-11.30 Dirk Johannsen (University of Oslo): “The mystical breakthrough - Naturalism and occult explorations in Nordic literature 1871-1897”
11.30-12.15 Kristoffer Noheden (University of Stockholm): "Nature's Imagination: Surrealism, Esotericism, and Ecology."
12.15-13.00 LUNCH for the speakers
13.00-13.45 Giuliano D’Amico (University of Oslo): “The Fantasy of Peer Gynt: appropriation, overinterpretation, or...?”
13.45-14.30 Discussion and further plans

Practical information

Blindern campus and PA Munchs hus are best reached by the Underground (T-Bane). Get off at Forskningsparken stop.

Speakers will be staying at Scandic Hotel Holberg (Holbergs plass 1)

Dinner on Thursday will take place at Restaurant Smalhans (Ullevålsveien 43)

The XIVth International Ibsen Conference

The XIVth International Ibsen Conference will be held at the Ibsenhuset Concert Hall in Skien, Norway. The conference is organized by the Centre for Ibsen Studies in co-operation with Skien Municipality.

Time: Sep. 5, 2018–Sep. 8, 2018

Place:

Main conference venue: Ibsenhuset Concert Hall, Lundegata 6, Skien
Friday afternoon venue (final session only): Telemark Museum, Brekkeparken, Øvregate 41, Skien

Conference Program with Parallel Sessions

Wednesday September 5th

3:00 pm Registration
4:00 pm Opening remarks/greetings
4:30 pm Keynote: Xiaomei Chen, “Performing Ibsen in China/Teaching China in America Through Ibsen”
6:00 pm Reception at the Ibsen Museum Venstøp

Thursday September 6th

9.00 am Keynote: Tore Rem, “Mediation and power: a typology”
10:15 am Parallel Sessions
- 1.1 Ibsen in Translation (chair: Anne Lande Peters)
  - May-Brit Akerholt: “Words as Springboard to Performance”
  - Astri Ghosh: “Translating Impoliteness to Hindi: Face Threatening Acts and Social Distance in Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder, and An Enemy of the People”
  - Elham Alizadeh Ilkhanladar: “Ibsen’s A Doll’s House in Iran: Manipulation and Reception”
- 1.2 Rethinking Women and/in Ibsen (chair: Joan Templeton)
  - Beret Wicklund: “Women’s Ideas of Power in Ibsen’s Dramas”
  - Wenche Torrissen: “Ibsen and ‘Second-Wave’ Feminism in Norway: An Interview Study of Norwegian Actresses Who Played Ibsen’s Female Characters in the 1960s and 1970s”
  - Anar Rahimov: “The Personal Power of Women in A Doll’s House and Hedda Gabler”
- 1.3 The power of psyche in Ibsen’s plays (chair: Giuliano D’Amico)
  - Marit Aalen: “The Power of Interpsychic Relations”
  - Gerd Karin Omdal: “The Power of Mysticism in Emperor and Galilean. A World Historical Drama”
  - Ruth Schor: “Becoming Ibsenites: Informal Venues of Cultural Engagement in Late Nineteenth-Century Munich and Berlin”
- 1.4 Ibsen’s Influence on Other Dramatists (chair: Roland Lysell)
  - Chen Liang: “Religious Empowerment in Hybridization: Chinese Adaptations of Ibsenism in Cao Yu’s Thunderstorm”
  - Lada Čale Feldman: “Nora and Hedda United: The Empowering Ambivalence of Miroslav Krleza’s In Agony”
  - Janet M. Roberts: “‘Where Truth Might Live’: The Threads that Bind Ibsen and O’Neill”
- 1.5 Ibsen in a South Indian Context (chair: Krishna Sen)
  - B. Anandhakrishnan: “Ecotypes of Ibsen’s Plays in Malayalam”
  - Shaik John Bashur: “Examining the role of Henrik Ibsen in Telugu Theatre: From Relevance to Influence”
  - Kotla Hanumantha Rao: “Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and An Enemy of the People in Telugu Context”
11:45 am Lunch
12:30 pm Parallel Sessions
- 2.1 Ibsen: Film and Television (chair: Lisbeth Wærp)
  - Bruno Henriques: “Claire Underwood and the Power of Ibsen’s Women”
  - Anton Pluschke: “Happy is the Revolution of Tragedy: The Subversive Power of Happy Endings in Ibsen and SKAM”
  - Azadeh M. Isaksen: “A Case Study of Gender-Based Power Relationships in Contemporary Iran: ‘Nora’s’ Performance on the Kitchen Table and ‘Torvald’s’ on the Dance Floor in Sara”
- 2.2 Nature and Landscape (chair: Ellen Rees)
  - Elinor Fuchs/Read by Joan Templeton: “The Power of Landscape in Ibsen’s Final Play”
  - Mads B. Claudi: “Omnipotence and Impotence: Man vs. Nature in Ibsen’s Dramatic Works”
  - Keld Hyldig: “Ibsen’s Landscape Dramaturgy”
- 2.3 Stage Adaptations of Peer Gynt (chair: Sabiha Huq)
  - Abhimanyu Vinayakumar: “Challenging the alignment of text and Performance in Ibsen’s Peer Gynt”
  - Sanda Tomescu Baciu: “A Peer Gynt Performance. The Power of Adaptation and Mediation”
  - Kamaluddin Nilu: “Ibsen Between Tradition and Contemporaneity: Peer Gynt in the Sanskrit Performance Tradition”
- 2.4 Ibsen in a Comparative Literary Perspective (chair: Thomas Seiler)
  - John Lingard: “Enchanting Mermaids: The Ondine Figure in Ibsen’s Rosmersholm and Bjørnson’s Laboremus”
  - Martin Humpál: “The Power of Imagination in Henrik Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea and Karen Blixen’s ‘The Dreaming Child’”
  - Kakhaber Loria: “The Power of Modernism in Ibsen and Vazha-Pshavela”
- 2.5 Contemporary Stagings of An Enemy of the People (chair: Ruth Schor)
  - Crina Leon: “An Enemy of the People (2016) – A Powerful Adaptation at the ‘Vasile Alecsandri’ National Theatre in Iaşi, Romania”
  - Tapati Gupta: Dynamic Power Play in a Contemporary Bengali Adaptation of An Enemy of the People
2:15 pm Parallel Sessions
- 3.1 Ibsen in Germany (chair: Jens-Morten Hanssen)
  - William Grange: “The Power of German Actresses over Henrik Ibsen”
  - Clemens Räthel: “Redecorating the Doll House: A Theatrical Approach to the Lasting Work of Henrik Ibsen”
  - Thor Holt: “Heim ins Reich: Ibsen on Screen and the Notion of Heimat in Nazi Germany”
- 3.2 The Media and the Monetary System in Ibsen’s plays (chair: Helge Rønning)
  - Clare Glenister: “Ibsen and the Power of the Press”
  - Klaus Müller-Wille: “Ibsen, the Power of Media and the Political Unconscious”
  - Lars August Fodstad: “Mediating the Power of Money: The Monetary Breakthrough in The Pillars of Society”
- 3.3 Reflections by Directors (chair: Kamaluddin Nilu)
  - Heinz-Uwe Haus: “Ebb and Flow – Directing The Lady from the Sea on the Island of Aphrodite”
  - Mitsuya Mori: “Who is the Enemy of Society? Seeing Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People in a Japanese Perspective”
  - Ila Arun: “Ibsen and His Word Power”
- 3.4 The Political Backdrop for Global Ibsen Reception and Adaptation (chair: Cristina G. Baggethun)
  - Irina Ruppo: “Ibsen in Israel”
  - Victor Grovas Hajj: “Ibsen, Power and Politics in Mexico: Ibsen Meets the Avant Garde Director Seki Sano in Postrevolutionary Mexico”
  - Nino Mazmishvili: “Lack of Ibsen in Soviet Russia”
4:00 pm Parallel Sessions
- 4.1 Using the Power of Virtual Reality to Research Early Ibsen Performance (chair: Gianina Druţă)
  - Ellen Karoline Gjervan: “Creating Ibsen’s Virtual Theatrical Space – How and Why”
  - Julie Holledge: “Visualising Ibsen’s Designs and Stage Movement on the stage of the VR Komediehuset”
- 4.2 Hedda Gabler; new perspectives (chair: Astrid Sæther)
  - Olivia Noble Gunn: “Three Endings – and a Future? – for Hedda Gabler”
  - Roland Lysell: “Hedda’s Power”
  - Fatemeh Arbabi: “The Influence of Iranian Cultural Context on Juni Dahr’s Hedda Gabler”
- 4.3 Ibsen Mashups (chair: Keld Hyldig)
  - Camila Bauer Brönstrup: “An Enemy in the Doll’s House – New Dramatic Structure as a Dialog with the End of Certainties”
  - Ye Rulan: “An Avant-garde Expression of Ibsen’s Dramas on the Contemporary Chinese Stage - Ibsen in One Take and The Integration of Filmic Language”
  - Liu Minghou: “From An Enemy of the People To China’s The Crowd”
- 4.4 Textual landscapes (chair: Mads Claudi)
  - Benedikte Berntzen: “Ibsen’s Presentation of Unsteady Power: Fallen Power Structures and Their Ironic Presentation in John Gabriel Borkman, Hedda Gabler, The Wild Duck and An Enemy of the People”
  - Gunnar Arrias: “The Wild Duck and the Power of Art”
  - Guan Yangyang: “The Play of Power: City Life and Urban Issue in Ibsen’s Plays”
6:00 pm Dinner at the Ibsen House
7:30 pm Film Evening Session at Parkbiografen. Keynote by Lisbeth P. Wærp: “Ibsen on Screen: The Power of Place”.
- Film screenings (introduction by Eirik Frisvold Hanssen; piano accompaniment by Tormod Klovning):
  - The Pillars of Society. Thanhouser Film Corporation, 1911, USA, 10 mins.
  - A Doll’s House. Thanhouser Film Corporation, 1911, USA, 14. mins.
  - Hedda Gabler. Giovanni Pastrone, Gero Zambuto, 1920, Italy, 30 mins.

Friday September 7th

9:00 am Artists panel chaired by Robert Mshengu Kavanagh: “Using Ibsen to Empower Young People in Zimbabwe”
10:15 am Parallel Sessions
- 5.1 Peer Gynt and Adaptation (chair: Olivia N. Gunn)
  - Per Esben Myren-Svelstad & Sofija Christensen: “‘Akin to Peer Gynt’: The Power of Adaptation in Peer Gynt”
  - Dean Krouk: “The Power of Selfishness: Will Eno’s Gnit as a Rewriting of Peer Gynt”
  - Ellen Rees: “Two Early Silent Cinema Adaptations of Peer Gynt”
- 5.2 Intertextuality, genre and characters (chair: Dean Krouk)
  - Mariam Maglakelidze: “Third characters in Ibsen’s plays”
  - Sandra Saari: “Fairy Tale Power in Two Comedies: St. John’s Night and The Lady from the Sea”
  - Ralf Räuker: “Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, Brecht’s Baal and the interplay between Power & Vulnerability”
- 5.3 Ibsen Around the Mediterranean (chair: Bruno Henriques)
  - Anna Stavrakopoulou: “Ibsen and Women: An Empowering Encounter at the Dawn of Greek Feminism”
  - Eylem Ejder: “New Ibsen Stagings in Turkey from the Perspectives of Feminist Studies”
  - Cristina Gómez Baggethun: “"The Water is Corrupted": Fernán-Gómez’ Staging of An Enemy of the People (1971) as Agitation against Franco’s Dictatorship in Spain”
- 5.4 Ibsen and Philosophy (chair: Fredrik Engelstad)
  - Jørgen Haave: “Borkman and the Will to Power”
  - Sajad Rahmani: “Captain Alving and Karsten Bernick’s Struggle Against Societal Norms: A Nietzschean Perspective”
  - Mateusz Kucab: “Silent Musae? Ibsen and the Power of Muteness”
- 5.5 A Doll’s House and gender relations in a Chinese context (chair: Chengzhou He)
  - Sun Jian: “Ibsen and the Chinese ‘Noras’”
  - Kwok-kan Tam: “Nora in Power: Major Chinese Productions of A Doll’s House”
  - Terry Siu-han Yip: “Ibsen and the Reshaping of Gender Relations in Modern Chinese Literature”
11:45 am Lunch
12:30 pm Parallel Sessions
- 6.1 Uses and Misuses of Ibsen (chair: Irina Ruppo)
  - Sabiha Huq: “Culturalism, Soft Power, and Ibsen”
  - Monica Emilie Herstad: “Ibsen and the New Feminisms: Towards a Backdrop of the Anthropocene”
  - Giuliano D’Amico: “‘Solguden’: Ibsen and the Power of Forgery”
- 6.2 Ibsen and Illusions of Power? (chair: Frode Helland)
  - Fredrik Engelstad: "Rosmersholm - illusions of power"
  - Siri Gullestad: "Emotional power as revenge"
  - Helge Rønning: "Private and Public Power in Ibsen's Dramas"
  - Ellen Hartmann: “Power and helplessness in Hedda Gabler”
- 6.3 Re-Worlding Ibsen (chair: Ahmed Ahsanuzzaman)
  - Shuchi Sharma: “Enduring Rebellion: A Cultural Adaptation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House”
  - Krishna Sen: “Ibsen and the Power of ‘Otherness’: Re-Worlding Little Eyolf and When We Dead Awaken in India”
  - Xuan Hu: “From Individualism to Collectivism: Peer Gynt Adapted to Represent the Family Value in Traditional Chinese Culture”
- 6.4 An Enemy of the People: Text and Context (chair: Kwok-kan Tam)
  - Jinghui Wang: The Power of the Minority versus the Tyranny of the Majority: On Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People
  - Rezan Saleh: “The Power of An Enemy of the People in the Iraqi and Kurdish Theatre: A Cross History”
  - Mei-Fang Chang: Populism versus Solipsistic Elitism in Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People
2:15 pm Parallel Sessions
- 7.1 Ibsen in Practice in Bangladesh (chair: B. Anandhakrishnan)
  - Ahmed Ahsanuzzaman: “Nora Speaks: A Doll’s House at Khulna University”
  - Mohammad Abu Sayed: “Ibsen in Theatre Practices in Bangladesh: A Sociological Study”
- 7.2 Eastern European Historical Perspectives on Ibsen (chair: Sanda Tomescu Baciu)
  - Elizaria Ruskova: “Ibsen and The Making of Bulgarian National Drama”
  - Gianina Druţă: “The Power of Critical Discourse in Fashioning Henrik Ibsen’s Reception on the Romanian Stage”
  - Maija Burima: “Staging of Ibsen’s Plays in Latvian Theatres in the 21st Century in the Context of Power Relations”
- 7.3 Thematic Approaches to Ibsen’s Power (chair: Ståle Dingstad)
  - Thomas Seiler: “The Power of Memory”
  - Joan Templeton: “Ibsen’s Power Aesthetic”
  - Nicole Jerr: “Ibsen’s Bourgeois Sovereigns”
- 7.4 Feminism and Performativity in A Doll’s House (chair: Liyang Xia)
  - Aiping Wang: “Tarantella: A Performance with Performativity”
  - Jung-Soon Shim: “After A Doll’s House: Feminist Discourses in Early Modern Korean Theatre and Beyond”
  - Li Yinbo: “On Ibsen's Changing Idea of Religion and His Dramas”
- 7.5 Ibsen’s Historical Contexts (chair: Tore Rem)
  - Madelen Brovold: “Norwegian anti-Semitism in Ibsen’s Era”
  - Heidi Karlsen: “The Discursive Context of Nora’s Slamming Door: Gender Discourses in Norway in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century and Nora’s Decision to Leave Home”
  - Thomas Rasmussen: “The Power of Danish Satirical Magazines over Ibsen’s Late Plays”
4:00 pm Parallel Sessions (Brekkeparken, Øvregate 41, Skien)
- 8.1 Ibsen’s Impact in the Middle East (chair: Sajad Rahmani)
  - Fatemeh Moradi: “An Analytical Investigation of the Impact of Ibsen's Plays on the Works of Nizar Tawfiq”
  - Nima Salehian: “The Collapse of the Autocratic Tyranny of the Traditional Family as the Collapse of the Authoritarian State in Light of the Works of Henrik Ibsen”
- 8.2 Media and Politics (chair: Klaus Müller-Wille)
  - Mariam Nodia: “The Political Influence on Ibsen’s Reception in the Periodicals of Georgia”
  - Chengzhou He: “Ibsen and the Long March of Chinese Revolution”
  - Frode Helland: “Ibsen and Politics”
- 8.3 Performance and Pedagogy (chair: Wenche Torrissen)
  - Tove Ilsaas Pharo: “Exploring Ibsen’s Texts Through Enactment: A Methodology for the Secondary and Tertiary Education Seminar Room”
  - Abheesh Sasidharan: “Pendulum of Power and Knowledge: Shifting the Engagement of Director to Pedagogue in Production Process”
- 8.4 Ibsen’s Life and Work in Context (outdoor session) (chair: Jørgen Haave)
  - Jon Nygaard: “Ibsen – and the Water Power of Skien”
  - Ståle Dingstad: “Ibsen in Context and the Power of Biography”
  - Astrid Sæther: “Ibsen and his ‘Princesses’: Male Power at Play on the Female Psyche”
7:00 pm Conference Dinner at the Ibsen House

Saturday September 8th

9:00 am Keynote Early Career Researchers Plenary Panel: Women Theatre Practitioners and the Global Spread of Ibsen’s Plays (chair: Julie Holledge)
- Liyang Xia: “Silent Noras”
- Svein Henrik Nyhus: “Ibsen Actresses on the American Stage: Two Cases of Artistic Autonomy”
- Jens-Morten Hanssen: “Nora and the System of Solo Guest Performances”
10:30 am – General Meeting
12:00 pm Lunch

Bus to Oslo. More information will follow.

The opening of the International Ibsen Festival

The end of the conference has been scheduled to allow time for conferees to return to Oslo to the opening of the International Ibsen Festival at the Nationaltheatret. The conference organisers are collaborating with the Festival administration to make sure that participants will be able to secure tickets to the opening. We will notify conferees as soon as the schedule for the festival is announced.

Free/discounted theatre tickets

The conference organisers have secured forty tickets at a 35% discount to the premiere of “The Master Builder” at Nationaltheatret and sixty free tickets to the dress rehearsal of “Peer Gynt” at Det Norske Teatret on Saturday, September 8. “The Master Builder” opens the Ibsen Festival and begins at 6 pm. The dress rehearsal of “Peer Gynt” begins at 5.30 pm.

Organizer

Centre for Ibsen Studies and Skien Municipality

Contact information: The Ibsen Centre at conference2018@ibsen.uio.no

Local Organizing Committee

Frode Helland, University of Oslo
Giuliano D’Amico, University of Oslo
Xia Liyang, University of Oslo
Anette Storli Andersen, Skien

International Ibsen Committee

Frode Helland, University of Oslo
Julie Holledge, Flinders University
Mark Sandberg, University of California, Berkeley
Jian Sun, Fudan University, Shanghai
Kwok-kan Tam, Open University of Hong Kong
Lisbeth Waerp, University of Tromsø

2017

Peer Gynt: Ibsen and Philosophy

The Centre for Ibsen Studies, in collaboration with The Humanities Center at Johns Hopkins University and the Department of Philosophy at Temple University, announces the next workshop in the series of workshops called Ibsen and Philosophy, to be hosted at the University of Oslo.

Time and place: Dec. 1, 2017 9:00 AM–Dec. 2, 2017 4:00 PM, Henrik Wergelands hus, room 210

Programme

Friday 1 December

Session 1 - Chair: Kristin Gjesdal (Temple U)

09.30-10.30: Alisa Zhulina (NYU) – “The spectacle of speculation in Ibsen's Peer Gynt”
10.30-11.30: Frode Helland (UiO) – “The Politics of Peer Gynt”
12.00-13.00: Thor Holt (UiO) – “Heim ins Reich: Ideology in Fritz Wendhausen´s Peer Gynt (1934)”
13.00-14.00: Lunch break

Session 2 - Chair: Leonardo Lisi (JHU)

14.00-15.00: Jens-Morten Hansen (UiO) – “Peer Gynt and the German repertory system”
15.00-16.00: Ellen Rees (UiO) – “Peer Gynt in Frames and Gutters”

Saturday 2 December

Session 3 – Chair: Frode Helland (UiO)

10.00-11.00: Lior Levy (U of Haifa) – “Solid, Slimy, Indistinct: Modalities of Selfhood in Peer Gynt”
11.00-12.00: Marit Aalen (HiOA) – “Peer Gynt and the uncanny”
12.00-13.00: Lunch break

Session 4 – Chair: Frode Helland (UiO)

13.00-14.00: Giuliano D’Amico (UiO) – “Isabelle M. Pagan and The Fantasy of Peer Gynt: Ibsen and Theosophy in Great Britain”
14.00-15.00: Kristin Gjesdal (Temple U) – “Emperor of the Self”
15.15-16.15: Leonardo Lisi (JHU) – “Form and Finitude: Aase's Death in Peer Gynt”

For further information, please contact Torhild Aas.

Organizer

Centre for Ibsen Studies at the University of Oslo, Humanities Center at Johns Hopkins University and Department of Philosophy at Temple University

All are welcome to attend.

An Analysis of The Function of Pidgin English in Nneora: an African Doll’s House

Centre for Ibsen studies’ In-House Seminar presents

Sefakor Solace Anku: An Analysis of The Function of Pidgin English in Nneora: an African Doll’s House.

Time and place: May 3, 2017 11:15 AM, Group room 1, Georg Sverdrups hus

Nneora: an African Doll’s House (2005) by Tracie Utoh-Ezeajugh is a Nigerian adaption of Henrik Ibsen’s "A Doll’s House" (1879). It has gained critical acclaim in feminist West African theatre for its treatment of issues in African feminism. The most noticeable departure of this adaptation from the source text is the ending where the protagonist makes a claim to motherhood. This departure from the original play provides an important view into African feminism.

Another major change is the use of Pidgin English, a blend of English and local West African languages which is spoken by characters added to the original narrative. The use of Pidgin English in West African theatre is not uncommon and its popularity has encouraged many studies. From the perspective of post-colonial theatre studies the use of Pidgin language in plays most often connotes a resistance to Standard English, generally considered a marker of colonial authority. In this presentation, instances of the use of Pidgin English in the adaptation and its added value are examined.

Sefakor Solace Anku is a PhD fellow at the Center for Ibsen studies.

Welcome!

Gabriela Zapolska in Et Dukkehjem: Ibsen for everyone?

The Centre for Ibsen Studies welcomes you to a lecture by Ewa Partyga (Institute of Art, The Polish Academy of Sciences) on the significance of Gabriela Zapolska's performance as Nora for Polish theater towards the end of the 19th century.

Time and place: Apr. 20, 2017 11:00 AM, Seminar room 114, Harriet Holters hus

Gabriela Zapolska deserves most of the credit given for the popularity of "Et Dukkehjem" among the Polish theatre audience in the last decades of the 19th century. She was performing Nora from 1882 until 1900, bringing Ibsen not only to Cracow and Lviv but also to small provincial Polish towns. Some critics claim her performance was secondary to the legendary first Polish Nora by Helena Modrzejewska who played the role in Poland only once (Warsaw, March 1882). However, the artistic criteria used as an argument in critical assessment cannot be separated from ideological notions. Zapolska chose a very different mode of expression in the public sphere from Modrzejewska.

As an interesting writer and playwright, controversial columnist, literary critic, and an actress; Zapolska was an original, independent, and bold thinker. In her public statements and literary works she provoked conservatives and supporters of women’s rights movements equally. Analysing her Nora performance provides an opportunity to discuss several intersecting problems: the relation between the perception of her public persona and the reception of her interpretation of Ibsen, the role of "Et Dukkehjem" in shaping her project of a more inclusive theatre, and finally the influence of Ibsen’s play on Zapolska’s elaborated approach to early feminism.

Guest lecture: Ibsen in Cultural Exchange: Prospects and Potentialities

Guest lecture by Professor Sabiha Huq from Khulna University, Bangladesh.

Time and place: Feb. 27, 2017 10:15 AM–12:00 PM, Group room 7, 3rd floor Georg Sverdrup's House

Henrik Ibsen has been one of the key figures in cultural exchange between the European countries. Most of his plays were staged in major European countries by the end of the nineteenth century. They conveyed sociopolitical messages which contributed in the European enlightenment and therefore had a global impacted as well. In this manner, Ibsen was always part of the soft power. Especially after the fall of the Eastern Block, Ibsen played a strong role as cultural ambassador of Northern Europe to the Subcontinent, influencing major sociopolitical change.

Since the beginning of worldwide cultural diplomacy, several attempts to employ Ibsen as part of the soft power have been recorded. Projects such as Nora’s Sisters, Ibsen between Cultures, international Ibsen festivals, inter-university Ibsen research collaborations, translation projects and many more, have all contributed to global awareness regarding women’s emancipation, globalization, the rise of religious fundamentalism, and other crucial issues.

At present Ibsen functions as an emissary of change for the Islamic countries, South Asia, and Africa; while at the same time being part of a global cultural exchange between Europe and countries like USA, Australia, England, Germany. This lecture focuses on how Ibsen has gradually become part of the modern soft power and how his work may contribute to cultural relations in future years.

2016

Conference: The Scandinavian Moment in World Literature

In the last decades of the nineteenth century Scandinavian literature emerged as a power to be reckoned with in European and world literature. How can we explain the rise of such a phenomenon from the periphery? How was the so-called "Modern Breakthrough" received abroad? And what were some of the effects of this wave of literature and drama?

The conference will sum up major results of the research project SCANMO, funded by The Norwegian Research Council. Invited speakers will present research on related topics and offer international perspectives on Scandinavia's "Modern Breakthrough".

Time and place: Dec. 1, 2016 10:00 AM–Dec. 2, 2016 4:00 PM, University of Tromsø

Programme

Thursday 1 December (Faculty main building E 0.105)

10:00 Opening. Narve Fulsås (Tromsø) & Tore Rem (Oslo): Why was there a Scandinavian moment and why did it end?
11:00 Mads Rosendahl Thomsen (Aarhus): World literature – a Scandinavian perspective
12:00 Christopher Hill (Michigan): Naturalism – a global perspective
13:45 Maria Purtoft and Henning Hansen (Tromsø): The Modern Breakthrough and its readers: Norway and Sweden
15:15 Sissel Furuseth (Oslo): The Modern Breakthrough in literary criticism

Friday 2 December (Faculty main building E 0.101)

09:30 Stefan Nygård & Johan Strang (Helsinki): Norden in European intellectual space
10:15 Jens Bjerring-Hansen (Copenhagen): Georg Brandes’s Main Currents – a transnational history
11:15 Blaise Wilfert-Portal (ENS, Paris): Scandinavian or cosmopolitan? Translation and nation in fin-de-siècle France
13:00 Tore Rem (Oslo): Literature, authorship and the national: from Ibsen to Hamsun
13:45 Julie Holledge (Flinders/Oslo): What did Ibsen do for acting?
14:45 Lisbeth Pettersen Wærp (Tromsø): What did Ibsen do for film?
15:45 Martin Puchner (Harvard): Response

The conference is open to all and no registration is required.

Organizer

UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education

Ibsen in Spain, a director’s take: When Nora was my grandma in the Francoist dictatorship

Spanish playwright Lucia Miranda will talk about her play Nora 1959 that premiered in the National Drama Center of Spain in 2015, and continues being played in different cities in Spain, with excellent reviews.

Time and place: Sep. 29, 2016 1:00 PM–2:00 PM, P.A. Munchs hus: Seminarrom 3

Miranda will explain her own take on Ibsen’s classic Et Dukkehjem (A Doll’s House, Casa de muñecas), what she has preserved and what has she changed on her adaptation of the script, and how she built her play on Spanish collective memory, women’s history and the world of radio that brought mass entertainment inside the dark cluttered sitting rooms of Franco’s time that were like jails for the Spanish women who were not allowed to work or have property of their own without their male tutor’s permission, passed on from their father’s into their husband’s hands. In the play Nora’s door-slamming is interpreted as a theatrical experience under the light of feminist theories from Virginia Woolf’s A room of one’s own (1929), and Carmen Martin Gaite’s Desde la ventana (1987).

Miranda was inspired by her grandmother’s shocking separation in the late 1950s (divorce was not allowed in Spain until 1981), her childhood memory of her grannie explaining how she one day took one suitcase in one hand and her two children in another and decided to start a life of her own, facing bravely the Francoist catholic society’s prejudices. The play was built on her wondering “What if my grandmother was indeed Nora?

How many Noras were in Spain during the Francoist dictatorship?

Open for all.

Book launch: A Global Doll's House. Ibsen and Distant Visions

This book addresses a deceptively simple question: what accounts for the global success of A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen’s most popular play?

This book launch is a part of the Ibsenfestival from 8th to 25th of September.

Time and place: Sep. 21, 2016 5:30 PM–6:30 PM, Nationaltheatret Festivalbar

Using maps, networks, and images to explore the world history of the play’s production, this question is considered from two angles: cultural transmission and adaptation.

Analysing the play’s transmission reveals the social, economic, and political forces that have secured its place in the canon of world drama; a comparative study of the play’s 135-year production history across five continents offers new insights into theatrical adaptation. Key areas of research include the global tours of nineteenth-century actress-managers, Norway’s soft diplomacy in promoting gender equality, representations of the female performing body, and the sexual vectors of social change in theatre.

Programme

Led by Professor Julie Holledge (Centre for Ibsen Studies, University of Oslo), this collaborative project brings together Ibsen specialists with scholars in digital humanities and theatre studies:
Dr Jonathan Bollen (University of New South Wales, Australia), Research Co-ordinator of AusStage, the Australian database for researching performance (2006-13);
Professor Frode Helland, (Director of the Centre for Ibsen Studies, University of Oslo, Norway), author of Ibsen in Practice (2015);
Professor Joanne Tompkins (University of Queensland, Australia), author of Theatre’s Heterotopias (2014), and co-author with Holledge of Women’s Intercultural Performance (2001), winner of the Rob Jordan Book Prize.

Free entrance.

Ibsen, cholera, and the drama of science

Guest lecture by Keith Oatley. Open for all.

Time and place: Sep. 7, 2016 10:15 AM, room 536, Henrik Wergelands buliding

Keith Oatley is professor emeritus of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto and a novelist. His most well known books on psychology are Emotions: A Brief History (2004), Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of fiction (2011), The Passionate Muse: Exploring Emotions in Stories (2912) and Understanding Emotions (together with Dacher Keltner and Jennifer M. Jenkins). His novel The Case of Emily V won the 1994 Commonwealth Prize for first novel.

Ibsen in the World

An international seminar on Ibsen in translation.

Time: June 2, 2016–June 3, 2016, University of Oslo, Blindern campus,
Georg Sverdrups hus, room: “Grupperom 7” .

Important! Out of consideration for participants with allergies and asthma
please refrain from using perfumes and other strong scents at this seminar.

Program (18.5.2016)

Wednesday June 1

Arrival and check-in at Hotel Scandic Holberg

Thursday June 2

9.00 Coffee, welcome, introduction

Panel 1: Ibsen in France. Chair: Giuliano D’Amico

9.15-9.55 Sylvain Briens (University of Paris-Sorbonne) Ibsen, Paris and translation
supply chains – A study of the Prozor collection at the Nordic library in Paris
10.00-10.40 Elisabeth Bladh (University of Gothenburg) Prozor’s Translation of
Gengangere (Les Revenants): No sense to a French audience?
10.40-11.00 Coffee break

Panel 2: Nora across cultures. Chair: Frode Helland

11.00-11.40 Christian Janss (University of Oslo) Nora and her agents in Germany
11.45-12.25 Gunvor Mejdell (University of Oslo) Et Dukkehjem in Arabic translation
12.30-13.30 Lunch

Panel 3: Ibsen in the Spanish-speaking world. Chair: Álvaro Llosa Sanz

13.30-14.10 Iris Fernández Muñiz (University of Oslo) The feminist writer translates: María Lejárraga's work on Et Dukkehjem - Casa de muñecas (1917)
14.15-14.55 Jeroen Vandaele (University of Oslo) Ibsen in Spain: The Franco Files
15.00-15.20 Coffee Break
15.20-16.00 Cecilia Alvstad (University of Oslo) The Early Reception of Ibsen in Latin America
16.00-16.30 Concluding discussion

Friday June 3

9.15 Coffee

Panel 4: Ibsen’s reception in Europe – new perspectives. Chair: Cecilia Alvstad

9.30-10.10 Bruno Henriques (University of Lisbon) Aportuguesando Ibsen
10.15-10.55 Anna Stavrakopoulou (University of Thessaloniki) The Wild Duck in Greek Waters
11.00-11.15 Coffee break
11.15-11.55 Giuliano D’Amico (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim) The Fantasy of Peer Gynt. Ibsen and Theosophy in England
12.00-13.00 Lunch

Panel 5: (Socio)linguistic perspectives into Ibsen translations. Chair: Gunvor
Mejdell

13.00-13.40 Álvaro Llosa Sanz (University of Oslo) Ibsen in a Transmedia World
13.45-14.25 Nina Zandjani (University of Oslo) Translation of proverbs and proper names in Ibsen’s works into Persian (fârsi)
14.30-14.45 Coffee break
14.50-15.30 Jens Braarvig (University of Oslo) Traveling emotions in Ibsen’s work
15.35-16.15 Frode Helland (Centre for Ibsen studies, University of Oslo) Ibsen and his translators
16.15-16.20 Short Break
16.20-17.00 Concluding discussion and summing up

Organized by Traveling Texts: Translation and Transnational Reception

2015

"NativePeer": A transcultural Adaptation of Ibsen’s "Peer Gynt" in India

The seminar is open to all.

Time and place: Nov. 11, 2015 12:15 PM, Seminar room 210, Henrik Wergelands hus

Who is the Indian Peer?

Kamaluddin Nilu will talk about his recent production "NativePeer", which he adapted and directed for National School of Drama in Delhi. "NativePeer" is a transcultural adaptation of Ibsen’s "Peer Gynt". In his talk he will focus on the process of cultural adaptation, and focus on the negotiation with a colonially mediated modernity, which represents the juncture of tradition and modernity in contemporary India.

About Kamaluddin Nilu

Kamaluddin Nilu is theatre director and independent researcher in Norway, affiliated with the Centre for Ibsen Studies as Guest Researcher. He is a former Chair Professor at the Theatre Department, University of Hyderabad. He has been member of the jury of the International Ibsen Prize and the board member of the International Ibsen Committee.

He has translated "When We Dead Awaken" (2010) into Bangla, written a play, "Resurrection", on the basis of Ibsen’s life and works (2005) and adapted "A Doll’s House" (2004).

Publications include "Contemporary Political Relevance of Ibsen’s Brand – the Case of Islamic Fundamentalism” in "Ibsen Studies", vol. VII, no. 1, 2007, “A Doll’s House in Asia: Juxtaposition of Tradition and Modernity” in Ibsen Studies, vol. VIII, no. 2, 2008, “Persistence of Memory: Ratan Thiyam’s Approach to "When We Dead Awaken"” in Ibsen Studies, vol. X, no. 1, 2010 and “ Democratization Process in Interculturalism: Staging Ibsen within a Folk Theatrical Form in Bangladesh, "Ibsen Studies" Vol.14, issue 1,2014.

Kamaluddin Nilu has directed more than 50 plays in different countries, including "Brand", "Peer Gynt" and other plays by Ibsen.

We serve coffee, tea and biscuits.

Welcome!

Joan Templeton: Re-Reading "The Quintessence of Ibsenism": the Psychological Shaw

The Henrik Ibsen Lecture 2015.

One of the great glories of Ibsen’s “new drama” was Ibsen’s complex portraits of what Shaw called “actual people in actual life.”

The lecture is open to all.

Time and place: Oct. 30, 2015 12:15 PM, Auditorium 2, Georg Sverdrups hus

Shaw’s book, while regarded as a “classic,” has had a very bad press. A long critical tradition—from James Huneker to Raymond Williams, Robert Brustein, James McFarlane, Michael Meyer—claims that Shaw’s anti-idealist argument turned Ibsen the artist into Ibsen the mere polemicist. Shaw’s mistake was to read the plays as the embodiment of a lesson, illustrations of a thesis, exercises in moral persuasion.

In her talk, drawn from her book in progress for Palgrave/Macmillan’s new “Shaw Series,” Prof. Templeton introduces the “other Shaw” of the Quintessence, the Shaw who has not been allowed to live because he has been buried under an overdetermined notion of Shaw as half sociologist/half preacher. One of Shaw’s great quarrels with the late Victorian theatre was its irrelevance to actual life, and of all the puerile ingredients that constitute this irrelevance, the “stock characters” or stick figures that passed for characters were particularly appalling. For Shaw, one of the great glories of Ibsen’s “new drama” was Ibsen’s complex portraits of what Shaw called “actual people in actual life”. The fact is that Shaw was one of the first writers in any language to appreciate and analyze Ibsen’s men and women based on close reading of the texts.

Templeton examine some of these portraits, including John Rosmer, Rebecca West, and Hedda Gabler, to present a new writer of the Quintessence: Bernard Shaw as psychologist.

The Henrik Ibsen Lecture 2015 is given by Joan Templeton, Professor Emerita of Long Island University. Templeton is a major Ibsen scholar whose work is appreciated worldwide. She is the author of Ibsen’s Women, Munch’s Ibsen and over fifty articles on Ibsen and other dramatists, in PMLA, Modern Drama, Scandinavian Studies, and elsewhere, and the editor of Ibsen News and Comment. The past president of the International Ibsen Committee and the Ibsen Society of America, she has held research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright program and the American-Scandinavian Foundation. She has taught at the Universities of Paris IV-Sorbonne, Tours and Limoges. Her current project is a book on Shaw and Ibsen for the Palgrave Macmillan Shaw series.

The lecture is open to all. We serve coffee, tea and light snacks.

Welcome!

Perception of characters in Ibsen’s When We Dead Awaken

Can a close reading of Ibsen reveal the reasons of his characters' often incomprehensible and erratic behaviour?

The guest lecture is in English, and is open to all.

Time and place: Oct. 5, 2015 12:30 PM, Seminar room 210, Henrik Wergelands hus

Many of Ibsen’s plays leave the audience with mingled feelings and even with a sense of contradiction that can be traced back to the often seemingly incomprehensible and erratic behaviour of the characters.

The following lecture and workshop will primarily focus on "When We Dead Awaken" in the quest for an explanation of this fact. Ibsen’s latest play will be discussed in the context of the works by the author himself as well as in consideration of the views expressed by some of Ibsen’s contemporaries (e.g. M.J. Monrad, C. Petersen, O. Brahm, H. Bahr, H. v. Hofmannsthal).

The lecture is followed by a workshop consisting of close reading and discussion.

The guest lecture is held by Ph.D. fellow Pavel Knápek, University of Pardubice, Czech Republic.

We serve coffee, tea and light snacks.

Welcome!

Ibsen’s Empty Nurseries: Freedom, Responsibility, and the Reproductive Metaphor

Why does Henrik Ibsen empty nurseries and then fill them up with books, a troll-princess, and urchins?

The guest lecture is open to all.

Time and place: Sep. 16, 2015 10:00 AM, Seminar room 210, Henrik Wergelands hus

"… it is always important to take stock of where feminism is, even as that effort at reflection is necessarily marred … No one stands within a definition of feminism that would remain uncontested." – Judith Butler, “The Ends of Sexual Difference?” (2004, 174)

In "The Lady from the Sea", after the death of her son and a period of neurotic crisis, Ellida discovers (with the aid of her husband) freedom and responsibility. But Ellida’s breakthrough leads to Ibsen’s reprise: he now gets to work emptying and then filling nurseries with books, a troll-princess, and urchins.

This talk focuses on Ibsen’s interest in (pro)creativity, expressed by means of these nurseries and the reproductive metaphor in "Hedda Gabler", "The Master Builder", and "Little Eyolf". As my title and epigraph suggest, this discussion is part of a larger project in which I revisit the “woman question” in what is sometimes called the post-woman era, shifting focus from freedom and individualism to sexual difference and queerer matters.

Olivia Noble Gunn received her MA in performance studies from New York University, her PhD in comparative literature from University of California Irvine. She is Assistant Professor in the Department of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington.

We serve coffee, tea and light snacks from 09:45.

Welcome!

Philosophical Perspectives on Ibsen: Drama, History, Tradition

The seminar is in English and is open to all.

Time and place: Apr. 29, 2015 9:30 AM–Apr. 30, 2015 4:15 PM, Seminar room 210, Henrik Wergelands hus

Program

Wednesday April 29

9:30 - 10:45 Klaus Müller-Wille (Zürich): "The Historicity of the Presence: Ibsen's De unges Forbund (The League of Youth)"
11:00 - 12:15 Kristin Gjesdal (Temple University/UiO): "Time for History: The Vikings at Helgeland and Hedda Gabler"
12:15 -13:45 Lunch break
13:45 - 15:00 Tom Stern (UCL): "Hedda Gabler and the Uses of Beauty"
15:15 - 16:30 Leonardo Lisi (Johns Hopkins): "Ibsen and the Boredom of History"

Thursday April 30

09:30 - 10:30 Frode Helland (The Ibsen Centre): "The Scars of Modern Life: Hedda Gabler in Adorno's Prism"
10:30 - 11:45 Lior Levy (Haifa): "Dramatic Wonder: Sartre and Ibsen on Change and Futurity in Theater"
11:45 - 12:45 Lunsjpause
12:45 - 14:00 Paul Kottman (The New School): "Love and Marriage as Historical Practices in Ibsen and Hegel"
14:00 - 15:00 Ellen Rees (The Ibsen Centre): "Ibsen, Melodrama, and Modernity"
15:15 - 16:15 Jon Nygaard (The Ibsen Centre): "The history of Ibsen - in a historical-philosophical perspective"

The project “Ibsen and Philosophy” is a cooperation between the Centre for Ibsen Studies, Center for the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore and Humanities Center at Temple University, Philadelphia. The project has arranged three seminars, one at each university. The goal is to investigate different philosophical issues relevant to Ibsen's plays.

2014

Ibsen for Critiquing the Gender Structure of South Asian Islamic Societies

The seminar is in English, and is open to all.

Time and place: Dec. 4, 2014 1:15 PM, Seminar room 210, Henrik Wergeland's house, Blindern

South Asia has been an important region in making significant new plays based on Ibsen in which gender has been spotted as an issue that deeply influenced the adaptations. These adaptations basically commented on traditional power structure existing in South Asian societies and stressed the necessity of women's emancipation.

There have been a number of plays adapted from the gender persperctive since the nineteen nineties and the present discussion covers one Pakistani and two Bangladeshi adaptations of "A Doll's House", "Ghosts" and "Peer Gynt" in which traditional and religious views are in conflict with the rising gender awareness.

"Gurriya Ka Ghar" is an Urdu adaptation of "A Doll's House" by Tehrik-e-Niswan, a thetare that started its journey as an organization for securing women's rights. The play shows the decadence of the society which is based on corrupt and false Islamic values that help the society exploit women in the name of responsibilities.

"Krishnabibar" is adapted from "Ghosts"; set against a progressive middle class Islamic society, it directly advocates women's education and strongly protests against the misinterpretation of Islam by some so-called religious leaders.

"Peer Gynt", adapted as "Peer Chan", calls for women's freedom in remote and rural societies where education and women's empowerment are hardly attainable.

These plays display how Ibsen has become a tool for questioning the exploitative nature of the South Asian Islamic societies, which situation has recently attracted global attention because of the Nobel Peace Prize recipient Malala's campaign.

Sabiha Huq is Professor at Khulna University in Bangladesh. She has a doctoral degree in humanities from Centre for Ibsen Studies, UiO. She defended her doctoral thesis "The Nation Speaks through the Global: Transformations of Peer Gynt in South Asia and in a Norwegian Valley" in September this year.

We serve coffee/tea and biscuits.

Welcome!

Svanhild: Ibsen Meets Artaud in the 21st Century

Grusomhetens teater uses physical acting techniques in their staging of Ibsen´s "Svanhild".

The In-House seminar is in English, and is open to all.

Time and place: Oct. 23, 2014 1:15 PM, Seminar room 210, Henrik Wergeland's house

In 2009, director Lars Øyno staged the world premiere of Henrik Ibsen´s chamber opera, "Fjeldfuglen"; five years later, he directed a second world premiere of Ibsen´s, his unfinished drama "Svanhild". After originally appearing at his independent theatre group in Oslo, Grusomhetens Teater, the pieces have also participated in the International Ibsen Festival, as well as toured internationally.

Øyno will discuss how he came to direct the premieres of these two plays of Ibsen´s from 1859, with particular emphasis on "Svanhild" in 2014. He will also discuss some of the unique theatrical elements and physical acting techniques distinct to his artistic vision with Grusomhetens Teater, a group working since 1992 in the tradition of Antonin Artaud and his "theatre of cruelty".

Øyno is a professional actor and director, as well as the Artistic Director of Grusomhetens Teater in Oslo, which he founded in 1992.

We serve coffee, tea and light snacks.

Welcome!

How to Become a World Dramatist – Ibsen’s International Breakthrough

Ibsen’s road to success was a series of breakthroughs, with "The Feast at Solhaug" in Norway, with "Brand" in the Nordic countries, with "Pillars of Society" on the European continent (through Germany and Austria), with "A Doll’s House" globally (through England).

Time and place: Oct. 10, 2014 1:15 PM, Seminar room 210, Henrik Wergeland's house

The Ibsen Centre welcomes you to an In-House seminar to learn about the sub-surface details of Ibsen’s road to success.

The seminar is in English, and is open to all.

Welcome!

Program

Ståle Dingstad, The Smiling Power

Recently, the newspaper Verdens Gang elected Henrik Ibsen to be the most important Norwegian person during the last 200 years. He is played world wide, but certainly not because of his Norwegian background. What was the reason for Ibsen’s success? Was it because of his dramatic form, which made him the founder of the modern drama, starting with The Pillars of Society (1877)? Or was it because of his contribution to the women-emancipation movement through plays like A Doll’s House (1879)?

Dingstad is Professor at the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies, University of Oslo

Jens-Morten Hanssen, Ibsen’s German Breakthrough – Graphs, Maps, Trees

Ibsen’s German breakthrough led to his subsequent international breakthrough, but how did this come about? IbsenStage, now holding close to 12,000 records of data from performances of Ibsen’s plays from 1850 and up until the present day, enables us to analyze and assess the quantitative aspects of Ibsen’s global success. Inspired by Franco Moretti’s methodological approach to literary studies, Hanssen will present visualisations of the data and show how interrogation of these visualisations opens up for new insights.

Hanssen is PhD Candidate at the Ibsen Centre, University of Oslo

Giuliano D’Amico, Towards a Comparative Reception of Ibsen

D’Amico will argue for a methodology for a comparative study of Ibsen's reception abroad, based on six interrelated areas of research: geography, literary and theatrical context, middlemen, theatre vs. the book market, copyright and translation. He will show how this methodology works with selected examples from the reception of Ibsen in Europe, and invite to a discussion of how this model can be used for the study of the reception of Ibsen elsewhere in the world.

D’Amico is Associate Professor of Scandinavian Literature at Volda University College.

Ibsen's Visual Poetry

A chief reason that Henrik Ibsen became one of the world's greatest playwrights was his eye for visually compelling and meaningful images.

The lecture is in English, and is open to all.

Time and place: Sep. 10, 2014 12:15 PM, Seminar room 3, Georg Sverdrup's house

Professor Arthur Holmberg visits Oslo and The University of Oslo during the first week of The National Theatre's International Ibsen Festival. The professor of theatre arts gives a talk where he describes Ibsen's unique sense of visual poetry.

Roland Barthes called theatre “a density of signs". Writing a play is more difficult than writing a novel or writing a poem. Novelists and poets manipulate language. A playwright manipulates language as well, but he must also manipulate all the semiotic codes of the stage, including visual images. Ibsen was a great playwright for many reasons, but chief among them was his camera eye. He thought in terms of stage images, images not only visually compelling but also at times more meaningful than the dialog. Through visual poetry Ibsen probed the subconscious and the transcendent. He used images to express what words cannot convey.

Arthur Holmberg received his PhD in comparative literature from Harvard. He is the Literary Director of the American Repertory Theatre and teaches graduate seminars in dramaturgy at Harvard. He is also a Professor of Theatre Arts at Brandeis University and specializes in dramatic literature, theatre history, and performance theory. He has published several books including "The Theatre of Robert Wilson", "The Lively ART", "David Mamet and American Macho", and "David Mamet and Male Friendship".

Organizer

Centre for Ibsen Studies
Arthur Holmberg

The International Ibsen Festival 2014.

Ibsen's "Brand" as opera

Welcome to a unique opportunity to hear an internationally recognized composer discuss the making of his opera, "Brand," based on the play of the same name written by Henrik Ibsen. Alongside the talk, we will be served some musical treats from Kilstofte's other compositions.

The seminar is open to all.

Time and place: June 10, 2014 1:15 PM, Stort møterom, Georg Sverdrups hus

Composer and Fulbright Senior Scholar Mark Frode Kilstofte discusses the libretto and music of "Brand," the full-length opera he has been developing this year while in residence at UiO's Centre for Ibsen Studies. His presentation details some of the project's challenges and includes passages from John Northam's translation and musical excerpts sung by soprano (and fellow Fulbright Scholar) Alisa Jordheim. He and Ms. Jordheim will also unveil part of Kilstofte's new song cycle, "The White Album." Cellist Leslie Nash (the composers's wife), rounds out this informal program.

Kilstofte is admired as a composer of lyrical line, engaging harmony, strong, dramatic gesture and keen sensitivity to sound, shape and event. Praised by the San Francisco Chronicle as “exciting and beautiful, consistently gripping,” his music has garnered a growing number of awards and honors including the Rome Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, ASCAP’s Rudolf Nissim Award, and the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship and Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His music, performed regularly throughout North America and Europe, has been featured on NRK and NPR’s Performance Today and is heard in concert halls from Moscow to Bangkok.

We serve coffee, tea and snacks.

Welcome!

Ibsen’s real intentions – who knows, and who cares?

How far can you go before Ibsen is not Ibsen anymore?

Time and place: Mar. 28, 2014 2:15 PM, Seminarrom 210 Henrik Wergelands hus

Is there a gap between Ibsen’s scholarship and Ibsen’s theatre in today’s Norway? Narrowing this gap was one of our attentions while staging ”Pillars of Society”. Being both master students in the Center for Ibsen Studies and enthusiastic theatre people, we have decided to put up this play. The idea was not only to stage Ibsen, but also to raise the question about how Ibsen’s works are treated and interpreted, and what obstacles one faces while making a stage version of them.

We have no intention to judge what others use Ibsen for, we also do it to communicate our own message. However, it is always interesting to question how long Ibsen remains Ibsen, how far the adaptation can go.

The is a lot of established ‘truth’ in Ibsen’s word. For example, Ibsen’s women have long been used to strengthen the feministic movement all over the world, in such a scale that it is worth to have a closer look at these women and reflect on what they are fighting for today.

Our production of “Pillars of Society” is a satirical comment on many things, but it is first and foremost a tribute to his brilliant theatre play!

Presentations by

Alina Aleshchenko and Synnøve Ryum
Julie Holledge
Ellen Rees

The seminar is arranged by Ibsen Studies' master students Alina Aleshchenko and Synnøve Ryum.

The seminar is in English, and is open for all.

Organizer

Centre for Ibsen Studies

"Samfunnets støtter" at Teater Neuf, Studentersamfundet

2013

Fredrikke Nielsen - Ibsen's unknown muse

According to Professor Harald Noreng, the Norwegian actress Fredrikke Nielsen made an impression on both Ibsen's life and work.

The arrangement will be held in English and is open to all.

Time and place: Oct. 15, 2013 1:15 PM, Seminar room 210, Henrik Wergeland's house

The Norwegian actress Fredrikke Nielsen (1837-1912) worked closely with the young director Henrik Ibsen at The Norwegian Theater in Bergen from 1853-57. One of the highlights of their collaboration was when Ibsen in 1956 chose her for the role of Signe in his play "The Feast at Solhoug", which became his first success. Fredrikke Nielsen experienced a 26 year long career with more than 300 roles before she left the stage and became a Methodist preacher. In 1980 Fredrikke Nielsen's presumed lost memoirs were found, and in 1998 they were finally published by Professor Harald Noreng. In his comments, Noreng describes several traces of Fredrikke Nielsen and her dramatic life in Henrik Ibsen's dramas.

Brita Rojahn is a visiting scholar at the Centre for Ibsen Studies, and she is currently developing a movie script, based on Fredrikke Nielsen's memoirs and Professor Noreng's comments. She hopes to bring Fredrikke Nielsen back into deserved limelight, and also to shed some light on a young Henrik Ibsen, a world famous writer in the making.

We serve coffee, tea and biscuits.

Welcome!

Henrik Ibsen’s Bastard Architecture

It is in Henrik Ibsen's architectural imagination that he most clearly emerges as a master of the uncanny.

The lecture is open for all.

Time and place: Aug. 26, 2013 1:15 PM, Auditorium 1, Helga Eng's house

Since most buildings outlive their builders, architectural structures generally provide an easy physical metaphor for the problem of vestigial social ideas and attitudes that have persisted past their proper time. Ibsen exploited this problem consistently in his dramas by depicting the ways in which architectural structures, with their resistant materiality and multi-generational existence, lag behind thought and cannot be forced into compliance with the projects of forward-thinking characters.

If it is possible to use terms like “vestigial,” “proper,” and “forward-thinking” to characterize Ibsen’s relation to architectural metaphor, however, that is only because his thinking is of a specific historical kind. Of all of possible ways of imagining architecture in a literary way — ranging from gothic horror to national preservationism, from historical reverie to modernist, built-from-scratch utopias — Ibsen exploits those qualities of architecture that are most antagonistic to a modern conception of forward-moving time.

The Henrik Ibsen Lecture 2013 is given by Professor Mark Sandberg, professor at Department of Scandinavian Studies and Department of Film and Media Studies at Berkeley, University of California.

Students’ Ibsen: A Doll’s House at Khulna University

Ibsen's "A Doll's House" is highly relevant in many parts of the world, and in February the play was staged at Khulna University, Bangladesh. Professor Ahmed Ahsanuzzaman gives a talk about the Khulna students' understanding and adaption of Ibsens play, in light of the current socio-political situation in Bangladesh.

Time and place: Mar. 21, 2013 2:15 PM, Seminar room 210, Henrik Wergeland's house

Ahmed Ahsanuzzaman, professor of English at Khulna University, Bangladesh discusses how the student-performers of Khulna University, a public university in the southern-western region of Bangladesh, create A Doll’s House in the present-day context of the country. Premiered on February 27, 2013 A Doll’s House directed by Hamalna Nizam, a fourth year student of English, was an open-air performance. Ahsanuzzaman introduces the production and shares his experience of watching it, and raises the issue: how do the current socio-political issues of the country seen and understood by the Bangladeshi university students influence their understanding and production of A Doll’s House?

Ahsanuzzaman received his PhD from UiO for the dissertation Sambhu Mitra’s A Doll’s House: Putul Khela in Bangladesh in 2012. Earlier he did his Master of Philosophy in Ibsen Studies in 2008 from UiO. He did his Bachelors and Masters in English from Dhaka University, Bangladesh.

Ibsen and the Photographers: The nineteenth century's visual culture

Henrik Ibsen was careful to control how he was presented in photographs, and he allowed only certain photographers to depict The Great Poet.

Time and place: Mar. 11, 2013 12:15 PM, Seminar room 210, Henrik Wergeland's house

Peter Larsen is visiting The Centre for Ibsen Studies' In-House Seminar to present his book which was launched in January this year.

Ibsen built his own “image” which he used to develop his social network, and to promote his authorship. Larsen’s book is the first comprehensive presentation of the approximately hundred pictures that exists of Henrik Ibsen, and the unique material is used to give a broad description of the nineteenth century’s visual culture, and of the central role that photography had in the building of the Norwegian nation.

Peter Larsen is a professor at the Department of Information Science and Media Studies at the University of Bergen. He lead the NFR funded project “The Photography in Culture” (Fotografiet i kulturen), and has published several books and articles about photography, film and media studies.

The seminar is held in English, and is open to all.

Welcome!

2012

The XIII International Ibsen Conference: Ibsen and World Drama(s)

The XIII International Ibsen Conference will take place in Tromsø 18 – 23 June 2012.

Time and place: June 18, 2012–June 23, 2012, Tromsø, Norway

The conference is arranged by the University of Tromsø in co-operation with The International Ibsen Committee and Centre for Ibsen Studies.
Ibsen and World Drama(s)

The theme of the conference is Ibsen and World Drama(s). We are aiming at Ibsen’s dramas as world drama, world theatre, not to say world literature, as well as at the political, social and religious dramas of our world, contemporary and historic, which in one way or another are crucial for our understanding of and preoccupation with Ibsen.

Published Mar. 23, 2022 3:58 PM - Last modified Feb. 14, 2024 4:26 PM