PMA Professor J. Ellen Gainor will be delivering her paper, "The Echoes of Closing Doors, or, Why is the American Theatre Still Obsessed with Nora Helmer?" at the conference "Of Mutability and Malleability: Reimagining the Contours of US Theatre and Drama" to be hosted by the University of Toulouse in June.
“My paper considers the American theatre's ongoing obsession with Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll House (1879) and why US playwrights post-1970 have repeatedly crafted sequels to, and modernizations and adaptations of, this influential modernist text,” said Gainor.
“I examine seven of these contemporary works to explore why this one play continues to resonate with artists and audiences alike, paying particular attention to our culture's ongoing ambivalence about women's roles, reflected through the representations of the central character Nora; to the synergies the writers see between the play's original era and our own; to the play's parallels to our core dramaturgical form--the dysfunctional American family play; and to the varied trajectories and receptions of these works, as crafted by prominent male and female artists.”
Read more about J. Ellen Gainor.
Read more about the conference.
