Reimagining Ibsen: Recent Adaptations of Ibsen Plays for the Chinese Stage

Abstract

Henrik Ibsen has been one of the most studied and staged Western playwrights in China since the early decades of the twentieth century when the May Fourth generation introduced and appropriated him as a beacon for the New Culture Movement and Nora, the heroine of A Doll’s House, as a rallying cry for the cause of women’s liberation. For much of the twentieth century, since her 1923 debut via the bold performances by students of Peking Normal College for Women, Nora had been enjoying the spotlight on the Chinese stage, having inspired many a Chinese Nora both on and off the stage (Qi 2016, 343–352). Things have changed, however, since the 1980s. Not that the old favorite has faded in any shape or form, but that Nora’s siblings, overshadowed for a long time, have begun to (re)appear and shine on the stage too as the Chinese find that there is much more to Ibsen than A Doll’s House and indeed there is more to the character of Nora than as a champion for women’s liberation (Chen 2009, 130–132; Song 2011, 49–51; T. Wang 2011, 9). Some of them, such as Tomas Stockmann of An Enemy of the People, who figured in Lu Xun’s 1907 essay on European satanic poets, are rediscoveries whereas others, such as Peer Gynt, the “exuberant, outrageous, vitalistic” (Bloom 1994, 357) titular character of the 1867 play (first produced in 1876), and Hedda Gabler, the titular character of the 1890 play (first produced in 1891), are new ventures. From the usual suspects of problem plays to the romantic and modernist dramatic works, Ibsen has proved a gift that has kept on giving for over a century, a catalyst as well as a challenge that has never lost its refreshing rigor. Remaining as relevant, polemic, and potentially subversive today as ever before, Ibsen’s plays such as An