My Nora in Wu Xiaojiang’s A Doll’s House (1998): Aesthetic Transmission and Political Context

Abstract

No matter where or how Henrik Ibsen’s plays are performed, actors and directors bring their own aesthetic and cultural heritage into the rehearsal room. The fact that they are all part of a culture cannot be underlined enough. Or as the Ibsen researcher Frode Helland puts it, “we are all of culture, and we cannot speak from outside of it” (Helland 2015, 7). In 1998 I played Nora at the China National Experimental Theatre in Beijing in director Wu Xiaojiang’s A Doll’s House. (The theatre is now called National Theatre of China, NTC). In a press release from the theatre in 1998 I am quoted as follows: