'You've lies in the whites of your eyes, Nora. What have you done...?' Nora is the perfect wife and mother. She is dutiful, beautiful and everything is always in its right place. But when a secret from her past comes back to haunt her, her life rapidly unravels. Over the course of three days, Nora must fight to protect herself and her family or risk losing everything. Henrik Ibsen's brutal portrayal of womanhood caused outrage when it was first performed in 1879. This bold new version by Stef Smith reframes the drama in three different time periods. The fight for women's suffrage, the Swinging Sixties and the modern day intertwine in this urgent, poetic play that asks how far have we really come in the past hundred years? Nora : A Doll's House was first produced by the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, in 2019, at Tramway, Glasgow. A new production opened at the Young Vic, London, in February 2020. It was a finalist for the 2020 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, awarded annually to celebrate women who have written works of outstanding quality for the English-speaking theatre. 'A radical, stunning reworking which thrums with relevance and power... a wordsmith at the top of her poetic game... a classic play reinvented for our time' - BritishTheatre.com 'An intense, ambitious survey of women's shifting roles, which amplifies each step in Ibsen's elegantly crafted story, as though Nora's stamping through a cathedral in Doc Martens... Smith's ingenious dialogue makes what could be massively complicated feel simple and legible' - Time Out 'Smith's update is smart and thoughtful, balancing a sense of feminist history and activism with the tightness of a thriller and some rich personal drama' - The Stage 'Stef Smith's excellent adaptation... a provocation infused with Ibsen's radical spirit' - Guardian 'A beautiful and explosively significant piece of theatre' - Scotsman

About the Author
Stef Smith is a playwright whose work includes: Enough (Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 2019); Nora : A Doll's House (Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, 2019; revived at Young Vic, London, 2020); Girl in the Machine (Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 2017); Human Animals (Royal Court Theatre, London, 2016); Swallow (Traverse Theatre, 2015); Remote (NT Connections 2015); And The Beat Goes On (Random Accomplice/Horsecross); Cured (The Arches, Glasgow); Woman of the Year (Oran Mor); Grey Matter (Lemon Tree, Aberdeen); Falling/Flying (Tron, Glasgow); Roadkill (Edinburgh Festival Fringe, 2010 & 2011). Awards include: Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre, Critics Award for Theatre in Scotland for Best New Production, Amnesty International Expression of Freedom Award, Herald Angel Award, Total Theatre Award for Innovation, The Scotsman Fringe First Award (Roadkill); Scottish Arts Club Theatre Award for Drama, The Scotsman Fringe First Award (Swallow). She has been awarded the New Playwright Award by Playwrights Studio, Scotland. Stef was a member of the Royal Court National Writers Group in 2013. She is an Associate Artist at the Traverse Theatre. Born in Norway in 1828, Ibsen began his writing career with romantic history plays influenced by Shakespeare and Schiller. In 1851 he was appointed writer-in-residence at the newly established Norwegian Theatre in Bergen with a contract to write a play a year for five years, following which he was made Artistic Director of the Norwegian Theatre in what is now Oslo. In the 1860s he moved abroad to concentrate wholly on writing. He began with two mighty verse dramas, Brand and Peer Gynt, and in the 1870s and 1880s wrote the sequence of realistic 'problem' plays for which he is best known, among them A Doll's House, Ghosts, An Enemy of the People, Hedda Gabler and Rosmersholm. His last four plays, The Master Builder, Little Eyolf, John Gabriel Borkman and When We Dead Awaken, dating from his return to Norway in the 1890s, are increasingly overlaid with symbolism. Illness forced him to retire in 1900, and he died in 1906 after a series of crippling strokes.

Reviews

'A radical, stunning reworking which thrums with relevance and power... a wordsmith at the top of her poetic game... a classic play reinvented for our time'

* BritishTheatre.com *

'An intense, ambitious survey of women's shifting roles, which amplifies each step in Ibsen's elegantly crafted story, as though Nora's stamping through a cathedral in Doc Martens... Smith's ingenious dialogue makes what could be massively complicated feel simple and legible'

* Time Out *

'Smith's update is smart and thoughtful, balancing a sense of feminist history and activism with the tightness of a thriller and some rich personal drama'

* The Stage *

'Stef Smith's excellent adaptation... a provocation infused with Ibsen's radical spirit'

* Guardian *

'A beautiful and explosively significant piece of theatre'

* Scotsman *



Book Information
ISBN 9781848429505
Author Stef Smith
Format Paperback
Page Count 112
Imprint Nick Hern Books
Publisher Nick Hern Books