`Dollhouse Brings Experimental Theater
By Chung Ah-young
Staff Reporter
Innovative American theater director Lee Breuer's production of ``Dollhouse'' will hit the stage in Seoul next month.
``Dollhouse,'' which is based on Henrik Ibsen's ``A Doll's House,'' is a cutting-edge post-modern feminist statement by Breuer.
Breuer and his partner, Ruth Maleczech, are founding members of the avant-garde theater company Mabou Mines based in New York.
He has directed over 30 plays, including Mabou Mines``Dollhouse'' which won an Obie Award for Best Director and ``The Gospel at Colonus,'' ``Peter and Wendy,'' and Mabou Mines ``Red Beads.''
Through the deconstruction and reinterpretation of classic texts, he joined the ranks of experimental theater directors of the 1970s, helping to create a postmodern theatrical style, along with Maleczech, Richard Foreman, JoAnne Akalaitis and Elizabeth LeCompte.
``Dollhouse'' has been thought of as the representative work of Breuer since it premiered in New York in 2003 and was then invited to various international festivals such as the Edinburgh Festival in Britain and Theater der Welt in Germany.
Breuer, who is co-founder and co-artistic director of Mabou Mines, a legendary experimental theater company, has brought his off-beat, humorous yet dark style to this production.
In his production of ``Dollhouse,'' the female characters are played by tall, strong women, while the male characters are all played by small, stately men, little people who measure less than 130 centimeters tall.
Breuer puts emphasis on the big women who are forced to conform to a small world, with even the houses made to fit the men.
The entire play takes place in the children's room where, for Christmas, Nora has given her children the actual life-size children's dollhouse, along with child-size furniture.
As the scenes unfold, the characters move through the dollhouse. Then, relationships between characters are explored through size and power on many levels.
The play is traditionally performed with a feminist tinge as Nora, the main character being oppressed by the men in her life ― her husband Torvald, the banker she owes money to, and Torvald's best friend Dr. Rank.
Feminism of Ibsen's original work is metaphorically expressed as the size comparison of the tall women and the small men in the dollhouse, which symbolizes the men's world in Breuer's production.
The play will be staged April 3-6 at LG Arts Center which is located on Yeoksam Station Exit 7 on subway line 2. Tickets cost from 30,000 to 60,000 won. For more information, call (02) 2005-0114 or visit www.lgart.com.