The Ibsen-Labs Experiment: Five Rehearsal Rooms in Search of the Lady from the Sea

Studies of the global theatrical canon have shifted from an exclusive concentration on the deep analysis of written texts and their literary sources to the study of culturally diverse performances. Most recent critical work on the global performance history of Ibsen’s dramas has concentrated on major productions. To expand this focus, the Ibsen Between Cultures (IBC) project set up a series of Ibsen performance laboratories (Ibsen-Labs) to document decisions made by actors in the creative process of embodying an Ibsen text. All the members of the IBC research group contributed to the Ibsen-Labs project. As the Director of IBC, Frode Helland chose the scenes that would be used in the experiment and set up the Oslo Lab; Nilu Kamaluddin, Liu Minghou, and He Chengzhou were instrumental in setting up the Labs in Dhaka, Kathmandu, and Shanghai; Xia Liyang, Sabiha Huq, and Ahmed Ahsanuzzaman contributed to the documentation. Although I took responsibility for conducting the Ibsen-Labs experiment, the interpretations of the findings were discussed with the entire research group.