Ibsen on Theatre

A unique collection of everything that Ibsen wrote about the theatre.

Three new productions of plays by Henrik Ibsen open somewhere in the world every week. Moreover, they are adapted into multiple genres: Chinese and Western Opera, Japanese Noh theatre, puppet plays, musicals, dance performances, tourist spectacles, promenade performances, applied theatre, community events, and every possible screen technology.

The more successful Ibsen became as a playwright, the more reluctant he was to make public pronouncements about the practice of theatre, but his thoughts on the art form can be gleaned by mining his prefaces, letters, speeches and newspaper articles.

For the first time, these fragments have been gathered together in one volume. Arranged chronologically, they throw a unique light on Ibsen’s views on theatre production, casting, translation, the business of theatre, and most importantly his own plays. The result is an invaluable resource for those who seek to know what Ibsen himself thought about his work and about the theatre of his time.

Ibsen on Theatre is edited, introduced and annotated by Frode Helland and Julie Holledge, with new translations by May-Brit Akerholt. Also included is a foreword by Richard Eyre.

Ibsen on Theatre is in the Nick Hern Books ...On Theatre series: what the world's greatest dramatists had to say about theatre, in their own words.

‘For anyone interested in Ibsen’s plays—actors, directors, students, audiences—[this is] a marvellously accessible compendium of the thoughts of a man I now unhesitatingly describe as a very great playwright.’ Richard Eyre, from his Foreword

Frode Helland is Professor of Scandinavian Literature and Director of the Centre for Ibsen Studies at the University of Oslo, Norway. He is the author of Ibsen in Practice: Relational Readings of Performance, Cultural Encounters and Power (2015).

Julie Holledge FAHA is a Professor at the Centre for Ibsen Studies at the University of Oslo. She has conducted performance research into acting techniques used in the rehearsal of Ibsen’s plays in Australia, Norway, China, India, Bangladesh and Nepal.

Helland and Holledge have collaborated on two previous publications, A Global Doll’s House (2016) and Ibsen Between Cultures (2016). They are co-founders of Ibsen Stage (ibsenstage.hf.uio.no), the international database for Ibsen performance.

May-Brit Akerholt is a professional dramaturg and translator. She was the Director of the Australian Playwrights Conference from 1991–2001, and has translated more than twenty plays by Ibsen, Strindberg and Jon Fosse, which have been performed by most state theatre companies in Australia, the Nationaltheatret in Oslo, and in the UK and USA.