Ibsen in Practice: Relational Readings of Performance, Cultural Encounters and Power by Frode Helland

Abstract

Frode Helland. in Practice: Relational Readings of Performance, Cultural Encounters and Power. Methuen Drama Engage. New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015. Pp. xiv + 272. $29.95. Its both odd and slightly charming that Germans think of Henrik as German. As Marvin Carlson once observed, when Germans refer the Norwegian dramatist they often do so by the endearing title of Unser (Our Ibsen). According Frode Helland, however, the Germans are not alone in their cooptation of Ibsen. In his expansive new study in Practice: Relational Readings of Performance, Culture Encounters and Power, Helland reveals how theatre-makers in Chile, Iran, China, Zimbabwe, and Egypt possess their own unique claims of kinship with and his oeuvre. Investigating and unearthing such claims--by approaching them, in Foucaultian sense, as always interwoven within culture--is major undertaking of in Practice. The book focuses chiefly on the role that the state plays in the transmitting and shaping of ... Ibsens plays globally, which, in Hellands view, largely boils down one of two ways: sponsorship or censorship (4). On more perfunctory level, Helland's study provides extensive description and contextual analysis of major productions of Ibsen's plays across the (mostly contemporary) global north and south, providing an opportune sourcebook for researchers and scholars across disciplines, particularly those interested in the rapidly expanding worldwide phenomenon that might best be termed: #InterculturalIbsen. Organized by case studies of productions of Ibsen's plays on four different continents, In Practice begins with an introduction that clarifies its primary goal: To chart some of the relational factors that influence the practice in the performances analysed as part of broader effort to escape the mutually exclusive alternatives of internal interpretation and external explanation (2-3). Helland is clear up front that he seeks emphasise the social and political production of 'Ibsen' as an ongoing process (3) rather than as, presumably, fait accompli. Helland also opposes treating Ibsen's plays as original or source (3) material (as is often done Sophocles or Shakespeare), noting the importance of viewing them as Norwegian. As Helland stresses throughout the book, intercultural manifestations of Ibsen such as Norwegian-Chinese Doll House or an Egyptian-Norwegian Peer Gynt are often only made possible through the financial backing of the State of Norway as part of its targeted cultural optics of soft diplomacy (5). Charged with keeping track of Norway's promotional agenda, as well as the political and cultural motivations of the various state apparatuses in which Ibsens plays have been produced, in Practice assigns itself rather Herculean task: provide (in sometimes encyclopedic manner) the intercultural contexts of each of the more than twelve productions it closely analyzes. The book's first chapter, Against Capitalist Realism: Thomas Ostermeier, boldly positions the contemporary German director as the most influential director today (3). Positioning Ostermeier's versions of Ibsen, specifically the Berlin Schaubuhnes touring productions of Hedda Gabler and Enemy of the People, as neither post-dramatic nor deep psychological portraits, Helland rightly characterizes them as surprisingly traditional (15). While Ostermeier's is overtly critical of neoliberal capitalism, Helland argues, it evades riskier or more powerful formalist intervention in Ibsens canon. With its panopticon-like revolving stage designed by Jan Pappelbaum and accompanying lounge-inspired Beach Boys soundtrack, Ostermeier's Hedda--whose titular figure is played neither as romantic heroine nor as victim of social or psychological ills but rather with beautiful surface appearance (22) by Katharina Schuttler--becomes a portrait of generation and social class (24), striving maintain higher social status under the threateningly austere policies of the Hartz IV era. …