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          string(5053) "<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13834" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ibseninperformance_800x300.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="300" />

<em>Director <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/drawn-to-the-sea/">Shana Cooper</a> is taking a unique approach to staging <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/">THE LADY FROM THE SEA</a> at Court Theatre. Read on to discover how different directors and actors have brought Ibsen to life on stage and film.</em>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">With such prestige attached to his name, Ibsen’s famous works capture the creative interests of many directors and actors from all over the world as they yearn to tackle his plays in new productions. Performing Ibsen entails a variety of approaches to his texts as living documents capable of being re-contextualized in ways that accentuate their undeniable modernity. The themes explored often connect to struggles audiences everywhere can still identify with. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">In an upcoming UK film production of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(set to release abroad in July 2020 as of now), screenwriter Birgit Myaard and director Leon Mitchell aim to develop their own re-imagination of the play by infusing it with a 21st century touch that exemplifies how Ibsen’s works continue to remain relevant in the modern day. Myaard has said that exploring Ibsen has been a method for her to reconnect with her ancestral roots in Norway due to his depictions of the country and his cultural significance there. The film will feature K-Syran, a Norwegian singer, and will be released with an original soundtrack that conveys a similar mysticism to that found in the play.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">On the stage, directors and actors continue to grapple with the mythos of Ibsen and his famous texts. In 2019, the cast of a staging of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Lady </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">produced by the Norwegian Ibsen Company wanted to immerse themselves in the same surroundings Ibsen was exposed to when writing his play. Actors </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Kåre </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Conradi and Pia Tjelta rehearsed with their cast for their bilingual production of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Lady</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> in the very abode Ibsen lived in at the time of creating it. They appealed to the Norwegian government for this opportunity and were able to bring along their team to rehearse in his former flat at Victoria Terrasse in Oslo. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">To reinforce the divide within the Wangel clan, director Marit Moum Aune chose to re-imagine the doctor and his two daughters as expats from England who were drawn to Norway due to Wangel’s relationship with Ellida, a move that would breed resentment on the girls’ part as they had to upend their lives for their father’s new bride. The Wangels speak strictly in English with one another while Ellida navigates two linguistic worlds, talking in Norwegian with her close friend Arnholm and the locals of her hometown (subtitles were projected onto a wall in the production). The cast immersed themselves in the landscape, visiting places Ibsen reportedly went to and working into the dusk hours to get into a similar headspace as the playwright may have been when creating his work.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">In other Ibsen productions, teams have decided to accentuate the subtle humor laced throughout Ibsen’s work. From Jeremy Raison’s production of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Ghosts </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">that exaggerates and satirizes a character's views on fidelity to Lee Breuer’s </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mabou Mines DollHouse </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(an adaption of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">A Doll’s House</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">) that dabbles with physical comedy as visual representations of gender battles, some directors choose to apply a more jocular touch to Ibsen’s work, lending it a sense of renewed energy as they explore the nuance of the playwright’s social commentary. These different tactics in approaching Ibsen reflect the wide variety of reactions and interpretations his works elicit. The ability to reinterpret and re-imagine these plays is a contributing factor to the endurance of Ibsen’s plays in modern productions.</span>

<hr />

Previews to <em><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/">The Lady from the Sea</a> </em>begin March 12. <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><strong>Learn more →</strong></a>

<em>Photo of Chaon Cross by Joe Mazza.</em>"
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          string(4297) "<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13824" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/mermaidblog_800x300.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="300" />

<em>With critics praising <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/">THE LADY FROM THE SEA</a> as a "pre-Freudian folktale" (The Guardian), some Ibsen fans may be wondering how folklore plays a role in Ibsen's play. Read on to learn about the myths surrounding mermaids and selkies and how they influenced Ibsen's writing.</em>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The mysticism surrounding </span><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea</span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> originates largely from the palpable influence of folklore, not only on Ibsen’s creative process but also on modern readings of the play as folklore’s presence in popular culture colors interpretation. Ibsen reportedly drew influence from the natural beauty of his native Norway and was most certainly influenced by myths from his homeland. In modern reframings of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Lady</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, audiences often interpret Ellida as a mermaid-esque figure due to her intense bond with the sea (and her direct characterization as a sea creature). </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Although this connection is undeniable, Ellida does share certain properties with mythical figures beyond the mermaid. In Scandinavian, Scottish, and Irish folklore, selkies are seal folk who, when wearing a sealskin coat, turn into seals and live their lives in the sea. When they shed the coat, they appear to be human and can go on land. Several legends feature selkie maidens trapped on land. In legends, a man lures the selkie to land, steals her coat, and then marries her so she can never return to the sea in her natural form. She spends her life in deep sorrow, her liveliness eclipsed as the joy of the water’s song is muted to her. In several tales, she often dies shortly thereafter as her constricting life on land is something her soul cannot bear. Yet, in a few other stories, she chooses to stay on land, forever locking away her selkie coat and staying for the family she has built.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The striking parallels between Ellida and these mythological figures are apparent not only in their shared love of the water but also how marriage inevitably traps them on land and forces them to confront their situation. Ellida was, in a sense, lured in by Wangel and became trapped in a marriage. Though he did not force marriage upon her, the arrangement was practical at the time so she did not have another socially acceptable reason to deny him. In their marriage, she feels trapped, her daily forays into the sea providing a much-needed outlet, just as the selkie looks longingly at a possible return to their underwater home. When Wangel gives Ellida the freedom to decide for herself, she begins to understand that she is actually valued by both him and her stepdaughters. In essence, she has her selkie coat back but, as it is returned to her and not threatened by force, she gains a measure of clarity in what she now values more. Choosing to stay is akin to when the selkie gives up the coat of her own volition and willingly mutes the tantalizing call of her past underwater home.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">These connections to folklore lend </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Lady </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">a degree of enchanting mysticism as it explores more serious topics about social expectations and resulting identity struggles. They also reveal how deeply such tales are ingrained in cultural consciousness and their pertinence to literature and reapplying texts to our own cultural contexts. </span>

<hr />

Previews to Court's production of this mysterious Ibsen play begin March 12, 2020. <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><strong>Learn more about <em>The Lady from the Sea → </em></strong></a>

&nbsp;

<em>Photo of Chaon Cross by Joe Mazza</em>."
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          string(9760) "<em>Ruth Schor, an Ibsen scholar, focuses <span style="font-weight: 400;">on modern drama, theatre and cultural history with particular emphasis on Ibsen and the German-speaking avant-garde. She provides her own perspective on</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"> THE LADY FROM THE SEA</a><em>, providing context about the role of choice in this play and other works by the Norwegian playwright. </em></span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;"><img class=" wp-image-13796 alignright" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Eleonora_Duse_1890.jpg" alt="" width="335" height="482" />“My consolation in moments of spiritual anguish is </span><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea</span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">,” the famous Italian actress Eleonora Duse writes to a friend at the beginning of the twentieth century, “she is beautiful and comforting - ever-changing, like the sea itself.”</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> With this assessment, Duse gets to the heart of the play's problem: is the protagonist, Ellida, free, and if so, what kind of freedom does she have? After a celebrated success playing in and producing Ibsen’s </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Rosmersholm</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Duse embarks on another journey to seek an understanding of Ellida’s freedom. But the translation she has does not suffice and she crosses out the word “choice” and replaces it with the word “decision.” With this small edit, Duse was coming to grips with a central question that dominates discussions about </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> to the present day. Is the freedom to decide true emancipation, or does it lead the woman, as wife, right back into the confinement of marriage? After all, the play has little of the dramatic resistance to domestic life that can be found in other Ibsen plays. This play's “happy ending” is a rarity. Preceded by </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Rosmersholm</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> and succeeded by none other than </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Hedda Gabler</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> has caused puzzlement over its appeasing tone since it was first performed. What makes this woman capable of converting the weight of her past into a source of transformation without escaping? </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Lou Andreas-Salomé, one of Ibsen’s contemporaries, published a book about Ibsen’s heroines from Nora to Hedda in 1892. She finds an explanation in Ellida and Dr. Wangel’s mutual ability to “consider the other’s needs” and attributes an equally healing quality to the re-connection between Ellida and Hilde, Wangel’s child from the previous marriage. If we take this explanation seriously, does Ellida’s story then suggest that reconciliation is the true goal, and in fact there was hope for some of Ibsen‘s previous heroines? In short, the play calls into question the actions of other heroines. Why did Hedda Gabler have to crush that same hope? Are we meant to reconsider Nora’s exit in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">A Doll’s House</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">? These are only some of the unresolved questions Andreas-Salomé leaves us with. </span>

[caption id="attachment_13797" align="alignleft" width="371"]<img class=" wp-image-13797" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/small-1.jpeg" alt="" width="371" height="534" /> Anna Bloch as Hilde in THE LADY FROM THE SEA.[/caption]

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Despite its more conventional plot, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">does join Ibsen’s other plays in its openness to ambiguity. Similar to </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">A Doll’s House, The Lady from the Sea </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">presents its audience with an outcome that seems conclusive, and yet, leaves just enough inconclusive openings to fuel the imagination about what might come next. In </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">,</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">this question mark is brought to us by the next generation</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">—</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">through Bolette’s subplot, a marriage of convenience in exchange for an education. And most decisively, in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Master Builder</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, a play Ibsen published four years after </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea, </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">the same Hilde Wangel appears as a young temptress in her twenties who has escaped her father’s “cage” </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">—</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> with no mention of a stepmother. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">At this point, even Lou Andreas-Salomé needed to reconsider. A few months after her book came out in 1892, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Master Builder</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> was published. She hastily writes a review admitting that the re-appearance of Hilde Wangel sheds new light on the ending of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">. A century later, Susan Sontag takes the significance of Hilde Wangel’s return even further. Her adaptation for Robert Wilson’s famous production concludes with a sense of unease about the domestication of this sea creature. Ibsen, she claims, made Hilde Wangel reappear in the later play, when he developed second thoughts about </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea.</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Originally titled </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Mermaid</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Sontag says, the play draws on a folkloric theme about untamable sea creatures that do not belong on dry land. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Whichever interpretation one might be drawn to, it is evident that </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea,</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> and moreover Ibsen’s plays in general, continue to generate a sense of mystery and curiosity by remaining in constant conversation with each other. It is arguably one of Ibsen’s most distinct talents to ensure an audience never gets too comfortable. As he expressed it himself, his works can only be understood when read in their entirety </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">— </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">when read as part of an ongoing series. Ibsen perfectly timed this series by publishing a new play every two years just in time for the Christmas season. By the time he wrote </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, the arrival of the plays had become a national sensation in his native Norway. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Living in Munich at the time, amidst a milieu of theatre-makers, cultural innovators and thinkers</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">—</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">many women amongst them</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">—</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Ibsen’s plays fueled discussions at coffee houses and literary salons like few others. It is therefore the continuation of this Ibsenian journey to ask ourselves where this play could be taking us today, and how it makes us reconsider our own sense of freedom. Just as we become comfortable with this interpretative direction, Ibsen’s notes on </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> take us in yet another direction. Perhaps the play is a prelude to a different humanity entirely. He writes: “Has the path of human development taken the wrong direction? How did we come to belong on dry earth? Why not the air? Why not the ocean?”     </span>

<hr />

Court's production of <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><em>The Lady from the Sea </em></a>runs from March 12 - April 12, 2020. <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><strong>Learn more and buy tickets →</strong></a>

<span style="font-weight: 400;"><strong>Ruth Schor</strong> completed her PhD at the University of Oxford and subsequently worked as Associate Professor at the Centre for Ibsen Studies, University of Oslo. Her research focuses on modern drama, theatre and cultural history with particular emphasis on Ibsen and the German-speaking avant-garde. She is currently completing a monograph on the significance of Ibsen's work in creating an avant-garde culture in Munich and Berlin for which she received a Martin Buber Fellowship. Her chapter on the German Ibsen reception will shortly be published in the volume <em>Ibsen in Contex</em>t by Cambridge University Press. She is also a theatre practitioner and has worked with a number of international theatre companies. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span>"
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          string(5406) "<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13774" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/drawntosea.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="300" />

<em>Director <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/shana-cooper-2/">Shana Cooper</a> is known for her visceral takes on classic plays. Her work with frequent collaborator and choreographer <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/erika-chong-shuch/">Erika Chong Shuch</a> on Shakespeare’s plays utilizes movement to inject each production with a physical muscularity that matches their use of language. We chatted with Cooper to discuss what excites her about Ibsen’s <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/">THE LADY FROM THE SEA</a>.</em>

<strong>Court Theatre: <em>The Lady from the Sea</em> marks your first full-length production in Chicago. Can you talk to us a bit about what it means to be working here?</strong>

<strong>Shana Cooper:</strong> This is my first full-length production in Chicago, yes. I workshopped a staged reading of Paula Vogel’s play <em>Cressida on Top</em> at Goodman Theatre, but other than that I’ve yet to do a full play. Charlie [Court’s Marilyn F. Vitale Artistic Director] and I have been talking for years and this theatre has felt like a beacon to me. My background is primarily in Shakespeare and I’ve long known Court for its national reputation for innovative reimaginings of classic work.

<strong>CT: <em>The Lady from the Sea</em> is a classic play, but is written by Ibsen; not Shakespeare. What drew you to this particular play?</strong>

<strong>SC:</strong> This is a play that’s been with me for about ten years. I first directed a staged reading of it in 2009 at Oregon Shakespeare Festival and I haven’t been able to shake it since. It’s haunted me.

<strong>CT: What aspects have haunted you the most?</strong>

<strong>SC:</strong> The thing that’s really remained with me about it is the visceral way Ibsen captures the nature of struggling with who you are spiritually and discovering a different sense of self over the course of your life. That idea of self-discovery and exploration is much more terrifying and exhilarating than people are able to express it being, but Ibsen was clearly obsessed with our nature with free will.

<strong>CT: How are those ideas informing your approach to his work?</strong>

<strong>SC:</strong> One of my goals with Shakespeare is an interest in how to make these plays as muscular physically and emotionally as they are linguistically, and that’s one of my goals with this production, too. I have an extraordinary choreographer Erica Chung Shuch who’s a longtime collaborator with me. My hope is that as a company we can come up with a physicality to express these ineffable urges that the play deals with. My dream is that it’s a marriage of Ibsen’s brilliant dramaturgy, character, and language as well as a physical life that gets at the deeper yearnings buckling under the text that are hard to express. I hope it feels like we are expressing something new.

<strong>CT: What would you share with fans of Ibsen who’re unfamiliar with this piece but may have seen or read some of his other works, like <em>A Doll’s House</em> or <em>Hedda Gabler</em>?</strong>

<strong>SC:</strong> A major difference between <em>The Lady from the Sea</em> and <em>A Doll’s House</em> is that this is Ibsen’s first return to a more expressionistic landscape, and it’s one of his plays that’s actually set outdoors. There’s a fluid nature to reality and a mystery to the play that reflects our unconscious. It seems like it requires a theatrical production because of the fluid and sometimes nightmarish way that he’s expressing that volatility through the characters and the jagged relationship with the fjords.

You also get to see a writer wrestling with a new way of expressing himself, which makes it messier than some of his other works. It’s exciting to work on these kinds of plays because you get to see a great artist wrestling with how their artistic goals are changing, and so you get to see that revolutionary spirit in everyone working on the play, too.

<strong>CT: What do you hope that audiences take away from seeing <em>The Lady from the Sea</em>?</strong>

<strong>SC:</strong> My hope is that this play is an invitation to look at our own lives and life choices and identity and maybe view this idea of cracking open questions about our spirituality and our identity as a real possibility. The thing that’s brilliant about this play is that it’s quite true-to-life to me. The play is an invitation for us to reflect back on our lives in terms of how the small and large choices we make are at play with and against our free will.

I want to tell a story that young, modern women in particular can connect to and be thrilled by and learn from and have exciting conversations inspired by it. They’re on my mind.

<hr />

Performances of <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><em>The Lady from the Sea</em></a> begin March 12, 2020. <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><strong>Learn more and save your seats →</strong></a>

&nbsp;

<em>Photo of Chaon Cross by Joe Mazza</em>."
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          string(4969) "<span style="font-weight: 400;">The work of one of modernism’s central figures is prime material for various adaptations. With the play’s enduring themes, filmmakers around the world have seized the chance to direct their own rendition of </span><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea</span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Adaptations provide insight into the changing perceptions of the play and how a piece of theatre can withstand the test of time to continue enrapturing audiences. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;"><img class=" wp-image-13759 alignleft" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/starquest.jpg" alt="" width="222" height="302" />In 1954, an Argentine production of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, called </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">La Dama del Mar</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, went to the silver screen. In 1922, an Italian production </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">La Donna del Mare </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">was also created. This far-reaching presence of Ibsen betrays the enduring relevance of his plays. This work has also been adapted for other mediums, such as the ballet </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Kvinnan från havet</span></i> <span style="font-weight: 400;">from choreographer Birgit Cullberg. Soaring operatic works have appeared at festivals from Scotland to China. The sci-fi movie </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Star Quest </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">directed by Vic Alexander is also loosely based on the play, featuring a woman from the stars who comes to Earth and marries a scientist but is forced to choose between two paths when a figure from her past returns.</span>

<i><span style="font-weight: 400;"><img class="size-full wp-image-13758 alignright" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/JAWS_Movie_poster.jpg" alt="" width="256" height="389" />Planet Ibsen </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">is a dramatic film adaptation centering around Ibsen’s infamous rivalry with August Strindberg. It takes the figure of Strindberg and plops him in one of Ibsen’s own plays with the ultimatum that he must rewrite it in order to change his life in reality. The film plays with themes found in Ibsen’s works, such as the nature of choice and its consequences. Carl Gottlieb, the co-screenwriter of the film </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Jaws</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, even once claimed that he and Spielberg drew inspiration for the blockbuster from Ibsen’s play </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">An Enemy of the People</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The motifs of this play connect audiences of entirely different backgrounds in a thoughtful examination of the social institutions that inevitably bind them together. The complexities of relationship dynamics and cultural pressures on the individual remain relevant points of modern-day discourse, ensuring the continued presence of Ibsen in the academic field and beyond.  </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">As for Ibsen the person, the controversial figure went into a self-imposed exile to Italy after finding extreme dissatisfaction with his life in Norway, despite his professed love for the country. He did eventually return, though nearly three decades later. He is considered the father of modernist theatre, and with this title comes the adulation of both him and his works. In 2006, a puppet play about the playwright called </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Death of Little Ibsen </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">premiered and was even performed that same year at the International Ibsen Festival of Norway.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The legacy of Ibsen’s works continues to touch the stage and beyond. This palpable permanence and the gravity of his motifs ensure that his plays remain relevant and performed throughout the world. Audiences continue to be enraptured by the nuanced characters and lasting effects of Ibsen on media, as exemplified by plays like </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">and countless others</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></i>

<hr />

Ready to dive into <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><em>The Lady from the Sea</em></a>? Previews begin March 12. <strong><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/">Learn more</a><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"> →</a></strong>"
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            string(124) "How have Ibsen and THE LADY FROM THE SEA influenced other aspects of pop culture? Find out in this blog about Ibsen on film."
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          string(4484) "[caption id="attachment_13747" align="alignright" width="260"]<img class="wp-image-13747 " src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Henrik_Ibsen_portrait-199x300.jpg" alt="" width="260" height="392" /> Portrait of Henrik Ibsen[/caption]

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Henrik Ibsen was a Norwegian playwright in the 19th century who became well-known throughout the world for his significant influence on decades of authors and playwrights after him. Considered the father of realism, he holds a place in history as a founder of modernism in theatrical works. His plays, often considered quite controversial when published in the morally stringent 19th century, were and continue to be widely discussed beyond just an academic setting. </span>

<a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea </span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">was written in 1888, inspired by the Danish ballad </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Agnete og Havmanden</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">. In the ballad, a young woman named Agnete meets a merman who rises from the sea and promptly offers a marriage between them. She goes with him, embarking on a domestic journey underneath the waves as she and her husband make a new family of seven children. However, one day she hears the church bells from above the water and decides to revisit her homeland. Upon returning, she decides to leave her underwater family forever and once again live on land. The tale is so famous that underwater artwork depicting Agnete’s abandoned family was installed in Denmark</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Although Ibsen drew inspiration from it, the tale of Ellida Wangel is significantly different, yet just as enduring for its powerful motifs and a marked departure from Ibsen’s typical characterization. Motifs of free will, marriage, and the necessity of reconciling dreams with reality permeate the play and their presence ensures it remains startlingly relevant no matter the time period. </span>

[caption id="attachment_13751" align="alignnone" width="800"]<img class="wp-image-13751 size-full" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/small-scaled-e1582143710747.jpeg" alt="" width="800" height="569" /> Scene from a 1901 production of THE LADY FROM THE SEA in Berlin.[/caption]

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Ibsen is a figure who led a remarkable life himself. The man who would go on to produce works that are often only outperformed by Shakespeare was born in the Norwegian town of Skien to an opulent household, though this material prosperity disappeared so that the rest of his childhood and part of his adult life was spent in poverty. His natural talent burgeoned in the face of his responses to the social and political occurrences of the time. Events of his own life, such as his political activism, his eventual self-imposed exile, his affairs with younger women, and his eventual marriage to another woman all influenced his plays. The beauty of the Norwegian landscape and local tales also captivated him. His mystique even captured the imagination of artist Edvard Munch, whose paintings hosted subject matter that was markedly influenced by Ibsen’s characters.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Upon its release, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">was considered less shocking in comparison to Ibsen’s other plays. However, as Ibsen was notable for doing, the play still challenged the state of Norwegian society at the time, focussing on themes other playwrights overlooked, such as marital unfulfillment, the life of an artist, and grappling with stifling social expectations when trying to formulate one’s individual identity. In the modern-day, Ibsen fanatics and the newly-initiated can all recognize </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Lady </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">as a moving and powerful testament to theatre’s ability to critique and change social norms.</span>

<hr />

<em><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/">The Lady from the Sea</a> </em>hits Court's stage March 12. <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><strong>Learn more and save your seats →</strong></a>"
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          string(8244) "<span style="font-weight: 400;">As part of its 66th season, Court Theatre is thrilled to announce the continuation of its commitment to staging each play in <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/august-wilson/">August Wilson</a>’s American Century Cycle; a musical based on a short story by Doris Betts; and the culmination of Court’s ambitious Oedipus Trilogy. Court’s 66th season also features the return of director <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/vanessa-stalling/">Vanessa Stalling</a> and an intimate new take on one of <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/william-shakespeare/">Shakespeare</a>’s most famous tragedies.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">“As Court Theatre enters a new decade of producing plays which redefine the notion of classic theatre, I am thrilled to present a season that showcases a cadre of prolific playwrights,” says </span><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/charles-newell/">Charles Newell</a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Court's Marilyn F. Vitale Artistic Director. “It’s my belief that our 2020/21 season and the passionate artists collaborating on these plays will breathe new life into the rigorous questions each playwright poses about our world, underscoring why the classics have a powerful role to play in contemporary society.”</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">“Our 2020/21 season features an exciting array of classic titles and playwrights,” says </span><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/angel-ysaguirre/">Angel Ysaguirre</a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Executive Director of Court. “These plays are classics because our communities continue to imbue them with meaning and relevance and I'm eager to see how our artists and audiences shape meaning out of these plays.”</span>

<b>Explore the 2020/21 Season:</b>
<h2><b>August Wilson’s </b><b><i>Two Trains Running
</i></b><b></b></h2>
<b>Directed by Resident Artist <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/ron-oj-parson/">Ron OJ Parson</a>
</b><b>Performance Dates: September 3 - October 4, 2020</b><b>
</b><b></b>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Amidst the Civil Rights Movement, Memphis Lee’s restaurant is slated for demolition. While Memphis fights to sell his diner for a fair price, the rest of the restaurant’s regulars search for work, love, and justice as their neighborhood continues to change in unpredictable ways. </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Two Trains Running </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">explores Black identity in the 1960s with passion, humor, and prescience, demonstrating why Wilson is one of America’s most essential voices. With his singular point of view, Resident Artist <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/ron-oj-parson/">Ron OJ Parson</a> directs the penultimate play in Court’s ongoing commitment to staging all of Wilson’s American Century Cycle.</span>
<h2><b><i>Violet
</i></b><b></b></h2>
<b>Music by <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/jeanine-tesori/">Jeanine Tesori</a>
</b><b>Book and Lyrics by <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/brian-crawley/">Brian Crawley</a>
</b><b>Based on </b><b><i>The Ugliest Pilgrim</i></b><b> by Doris Betts
</b><b>Directed by <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/charles-newell/">Charles Newell</a>
</b><b>Music Direction by <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/tom-vendafreddo/">Tom Vendafreddo</a></b><b>
</b><b>Performance Dates: November 5 - December 6, 2020</b><b>
</b><b></b>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">In 1964, a young Southern woman travels to Oklahoma, hoping that a televangelist will perform a miracle to heal the physical scars that have destroyed her confidence. On her pilgrimage, she meets a soldier who holds the promise of a different path to happiness. Based on Doris Betts’ short story, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Violet </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">is brought to life with a complex score of folk, gospel, and blues anthems from Tony Award-winning composer Jeanine Tesori (</span><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2008-2009-season/caroline-or-change/"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Caroline, or Change</span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">). Charles Newell, Marilyn F. Vitale Artistic Director, helms this musical about faith and the true nature of beauty.</span>
<h2><b><i>Antigone</i></b></h2>
<b>by <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/sophocles/">Sophocles</a>
</b><b>Directed by <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/seret-scott/">Seret Scott</a>
</b><b>Performance Dates: January 21 - February 21, 2021</b><b>
</b><b></b>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">In the aftermath of a civil war, Creon shames the rebel Polynices by leaving him unburied on the battlefield. In defiance of the Theban ruler, Antigone plans to bury her brother’s body, risking her life in the process. With intellect and unstinting vision, director Seret Scott stages Sophocles’ exploration of notions of justice. </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Antigone</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> concludes Court’s Oedipus Trilogy, which ambitiously linked three ancient Greek dramas to bridge cultures, cities, and communities. </span>
<h2><b><i>Fen
</i></b><b></b></h2>
<b>by <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/caryl-churchill/">Caryl Churchill</a>
</b><b>Directed by <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/vanessa-stalling/">Vanessa Stalling</a>
</b><b>Performance Dates: March 18 - April 18, 2021</b>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">On the foggy fens of England, the ghosts of the past haunt the women laboring in the fields. Seizing on a new relationship as a potential path to escape, Val leaves the stultifying constraints of work and family behind, only to be confronted with the repercussions of her decision. Employing astonishing theatrical imagery, Caryl Churchill’s </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Fen</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> interrogates issues of gender, class, and exploitation with grace, humor, and anger. Jeff Award-winning director Vanessa Stalling (</span><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2018-2019-season/photograph-51/"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Photograph 51</span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">) returns to Court Theatre to bring her striking clarity and fresh perspective to the play that won Churchill the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.</span>
<h2><b><i>Othello
</i></b><b></b></h2>
<b>by <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/william-shakespeare/">William Shakespeare</a>
</b><b>Adapted and Directed by <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/charles-newell/">Charles Newell</a>
</b><b>Performance Dates: May 13 - June 13, 2021</b><b>
</b><b></b>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Othello, the great Venetian general, unknowingly seals his fate when he fails to select his standard-bearer, Iago, for a military promotion. Implicating Othello’s wife, Desdemona, in an affair, Iago sets forth a series of irreversible events that spell catastrophe for Othello and his country. <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/kelvin-roston-jr/">Kelvin Roston, Jr.</a> and <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/timothy-edward-kane/">Timothy Edward Kane</a> who sparred in </span><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/oedipus-rex/"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Oedipus Rex </span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">return to Court to star in this intimate new take on Shakespeare’s tragedy about jealousy, ego, and betrayal. Marilyn F. Vitale Artistic Director Charles Newell combines Shakespeare’s words with exhilarating movement and elements of the 16th-century story by Cinthio that inspired </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Othello</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, crafting a production that physicalizes the poetry of the original text with raw immediacy.</span>

<hr />

<strong><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/subscriptions/">2020/21 Season Subscriptions are now available for both new and renewing subscribers.</a></strong>"
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          string(3386) "<span style="font-weight: 400;">With her play </span><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-mousetrap/"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Mousetrap</span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Agatha Christie presented what would become a classic murder mystery, brimming with suspicion and paranoia as every possible suspect turns against one another and no one is safe from their past. She also constructed an amazingly accurate guide on exactly what someone should <strong><em>not</em></strong> do if they find themselves as a suspect in a murder investigation. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">From running away to breaking down about how you never meant to do something, all the characters exhibit some outward sign of guilt that points to them. Based on the characters' reactions, we compiled a list of things you probably don't want to do if you are innocent but find yourself under scrutiny in an Agatha Christie murder mystery. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;"><em>*Please note this does not constitute formal legal advice and is only inspired by this magnificent tale of Christie’s.</em></span>

<img src="https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2017/08/25/21/47/confused-2681507_960_720.jpg" alt="Confused, Hands, Up, Unsure, Perplexed, Young" />

<strong>Don't Say Cryptic Stuff</strong>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Don’t bring up things relating to the case. If the murderer is known for being obsessed with </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Three Blind Mice</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, don’t start singing it randomly as you enter a room. Don’t reply in a weird, insinuating way to people’s comments and then laugh maniacally.  </span>

<img src="https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1486218119243-13883505764c?ixlib=rb-1.2.1&amp;ixid=eyJhcHBfaWQiOjEyMDd9&amp;auto=format&amp;fit=crop&amp;w=1000&amp;q=80" alt="man running on road near grass field" />

<span style="font-weight: 400;"><strong>Don't Flee</strong></span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Running away is sometimes a sign of guilt. If you are innocent, then you do not need to flee from the accusations. It’s a stressful situation, we know, but just breathe and stand your ground. Unless you might be the next murder victim. Then maybe consider leaving.</span>

<img src="https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2012/04/05/01/08/long-25529_960_720.png" alt="Long, Nose, Lying, Emoticon, Face, Eyes, Yellow" />

<span style="font-weight: 400;"><strong>Don't Lie</strong></span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Lying makes everything worse. It’s an age-old adage, and it remains pertinent in this situation. Don’t give vague answers like you were brushing your hair in your room when you obviously weren’t and then proceed to get huffy about it. </span>

<img src="https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2015/09/08/17/35/man-930397_960_720.jpg" alt="Man, Fashion, Model, Fashion Man, Sunglasses, Cool" />

<strong>Don't Mock the Investigation</strong>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">This attitude tends to make you seem like you feel superior to the investigation and that vocalized disrespect attracts a lot of attention.</span>

While a murder investigation can be stressful, it's important to not lose your cool. Keep the above tips in mind and you'll be able to maintain your innocence with ease."
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          string(17418) "<em><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13390" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/stmartins_800.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="300" /></em>

<em>The Mousetrap</em> by Agatha Christie is the longest continuously running play in the history of commercial Western theater, having officially opened in London on November 25, 1952, in a production that, after more than 28,000 performances, runs to this very day. Christie wrote her first version of the story on a commission from the BBC for a new radio play to honor the 80<sup>th</sup> birthday of King George VI’s mother, Queen Mary, in May 1947. Titling it <em>Three Blind Mice</em>, she reworked the script into a novella, published in <em>Cosmopolitan</em> in 1948, then wrangled it back into a play, expanding it to its current length. Before it opened, she renamed it <em>The Mousetrap</em> in a winking reference to the play-within-a-play in <em>Hamlet</em>.

[caption id="attachment_13279" align="alignright" width="252"]<img class="size-full wp-image-13279" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Agatha_Christie_in_1925.jpg" alt="" width="252" height="318" /> Agatha Christie, 1925[/caption]

Box-office records for <em>The Mousetrap</em> have done little to secure Agatha Christie critical esteem. In venerable precincts of established criticism and scholarship, Christie’s works, more often than not, have been written off, even derided, as middlebrow, formulaic, conservative, or just for fun. Alison Light calls attention to the unusual intensity of this animus in her landmark book <em>Forever England</em> from 1991: “There is something about Agatha Christie... which seems to mark her out for an especially cold shoulder and the particularly gratuitous insult. It may be respectable to write about Conan Doyle or even Raymond Chandler but Christie remains beyond the pale, the producer of harmless drivel, an unsuitable case for a critic.”<a href="#_edn1" name="_ednref1">[1]</a> A decade later, Susan Rowland echoes Light’s observation in her book about British women writers of detective fiction, noting that, despite having “enchanted millions of readers,” there has been an “inverse relationship” between the enormous popularity of these women writers and the serious critical attention they’ve been given.<a href="#_edn2" name="_ednref2">[2]</a> Rowland sees this lack of engagement with such profoundly influential works as simply “astonishing,” and she expresses mystification at “the refusal to treat these authors as literary artists.”<a href="#_edn3" name="_ednref3">[3]</a> Critical disregard for Christie’s plays has been even more glaring than for her novels. Her contributions to the theater are mostly elided in canonical histories and anthologies of the 20<sup>th</sup>-century British stage or are, at best, addressed with a quick, embarrassed mention of her work en passant.<a href="#_edn4" name="_ednref4">[4]</a> Theater scholarship would seem to either discount her as a populist interloper or apologize for her as not really a playwright. For their part, scholars of detective fiction who actually do take her writing more seriously tend to brush past her plays, waving them off as ungainly, embodied adaptations of novels that are really best read at home.<a href="#_edn5" name="_ednref5">[5]</a>

[caption id="attachment_13396" align="alignleft" width="413"]<img class="size-full wp-image-13396" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/413px-Agatha_Christie_Memorial_cropped.jpg" alt="" width="413" height="599" /> A plaque memorializing Agatha Christie in London's West End.[/caption]

Even so, Christie’s achievements in the theater are nothing short of monumental. She wrote more than 20 plays, and she is the only woman to have ever had three plays running simultaneously on London’s West End.<a href="#_edn6" name="_ednref6">[6]</a> <em>The Mousetrap </em>alone has been presented in 50 different countries and in 27 languages.<a href="#_edn7" name="_ednref7">[7]</a> Agatha Christie is, in the summation of theater producer Julius Green, “the most successful female playwright of all time.”<a href="#_edn8" name="_ednref8">[8]</a> Such accomplishments demand “more complex explanations than that people like a good yarn, or a neat puzzle,” to quote Christie scholar Gillian Gill,<a href="#_edn9" name="_ednref9">[9]</a> and the cultural significance of Christie’s theatrical output deserves serious consideration, free from biases related to gender or genre. Denying that true artistry and literary excellence have played a role in Christie’s prodigious success is mere fatuousness, or else insufferable elitism. Like all masterly playwrights, Christie was an astute observer of people, and she crafted a unique style of dialogue with idiosyncratic rhythms that were hers alone. She was a sophisticated chronicler of the rapidly changing world around her, and built into her stories are morally nuanced cultural commentaries. The genre that she came to define, the English country house murder, in which staid, upper-middle-class comfort is shattered by violence and mayhem, offered Christie the perfect vehicle for tapping into social anxieties that circulated all around her, about class, desire, gender, nationhood, and justice. Devoted readers like cultural historian Jacques Barzun and poet W. H. Auden have held her stories up as classical parables that speak to deep-seated, inarticulable fears and yearnings of her readers and audiences.<a href="#_edn10" name="_ednref10">[10]</a> This ability of popular art to “tap into the collective unconscious,” Gill argues, is what makes stories like Christie’s so compelling to us, and so irresistible.<a href="#_edn11" name="_ednref11">[11]</a> In a word, there’s no shortage of meaningful ideas to explore in Christie’s canon, and the presumption that her worlds are straightforward or simplistic is a miscalculation that we perpetrate at the expense of our own enrichment. If Christie’s stories teach us anything at all, it’s not to trust appearances, and we’d do well to apply that same lesson to how we approach her mysteries, which comprise so much more than just cozy puzzles. Diligently and unassumingly, Christie created strands of narrative that needled away at tensions and sinister frustrations underpinning her social fabric, and nowhere perhaps more so than in <em>The Mousetrap</em>.<img class="alignnone wp-image-13392 size-large" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/collagemousetrap-1024x536.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="536" />

The kernel for the story is an actual event that Christie lifted from the headlines of 1945. The previous summer, 12-year-old Dennis O’Neill and his brother Terence, soon to turn 10, were placed in the foster care of Reginald Gough and his wife Esther on their farm in a remote valley of Shropshire. Bank Farm was an expansive, 70-acre property that the O’Neill boys were forced to work, milking the cows and tending the other livestock. While there, the boys were only ever allotted two to three slices of bread to eat per day, and they were whipped on their open palms for the slightest infractions. When winter came, they were made to strip naked and sprint across the snow-blanketed yard to go bathe in the animals’ icy watering trough. As the boys’ hunger grew more desperate, they took to furtively eating cow feed, and in one especially heartbreaking incident, Dennis was so starved that he lowered himself beneath the udder of a milking cow to to secure nourishment. On the night of January 8, 1945, Mr. Gough punished Dennis for not gathering enough dry firewood. He tied the child, naked, to a bench that was used for slaughtering pigs, and he savagely beat him. As the brothers huddled together in their bed later that night, Dennis lay in so much pain that he was unable to stifle his sobbing. Demanding that the boy keep quiet, Gough burst into their room and punched Dennis’s emaciated body repeatedly with the full weight of his 31-year-old fist. Dennis O’Neill was pronounced dead the next day from acute heart failure caused by blows to the chest.<a href="#_edn12" name="_ednref12">[12]</a>

[caption id="attachment_13398" align="alignright" width="411"]<img class="size-full wp-image-13398" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Agatha_Christie_as_a_child_No_1.jpg" alt="" width="411" height="514" /> Agatha Christie as a child.[/caption]

The Bank Farm case made front-page news in early 1945, as a horrified nation tracked the breathless coverage of the Goughs’ trial alongside headlines like “‘Massacre’ on the Rhine” and “Nazi Purge Coming.”<a href="#_edn13" name="_ednref13">[13]</a> Anguished, soul-searching editorials flooded the pages of newspapers, with writers demanding accountability and begging to know how, on the home front, any such slaying could happen. Abiding concerns over the welfare of working-class children like the O’Neills fueled public outrage, at a moment when foster care itself was already a lightning-rod issue. More than two million British children had been evacuated from sites deemed vulnerable to bombing during the war, and those children were scattered throughout the English countryside, living in foster situations with perfect strangers under the aegis of the same government machinery that allowed Dennis O’Neill to die. The day the Goughs were found guilty and sentenced to prison, the judge expressed utter indignation that their abuse happened “not in a slum, not in a hovel, but in a farm in our countryside in England.” Turning to Reginald Gough, he stated simply, “Your behaviour has shocked the world, has shocked England.”<a href="#_edn14" name="_ednref14">[14]</a>

The tragedy of Dennis O’Neill deeply moved Agatha Christie, who, already upon reading about it in the news, set to work formulating the story that later became <em>The Mousetrap</em>.<a href="#_edn15" name="_ednref15">[15]</a> In the play, the Bank Farm case becomes “the Longridge Farm case,” though audiences in 1952 knew what Christie was referring to. The play offers a response to that harrowing event by laying bare the inadequacies of important institutions that Britons feared were collapsing around them. Marriage, the family, the judiciary, the police, the educational system—all are interrogated in some way by the people of the play, and the soundness of these systems is found to be deficient. It’s not merely out of comedic snobbishness that we hear Mrs. Boyle say, “This country has gone sadly downhill.”<a href="#_edn16" name="_ednref16">[16]</a> Certainly, many in the play’s opening night audience agreed, and the fact that Dennis O’Neill tragically died in the way that he did was seen as evidence that the country was in shambles.

[caption id="attachment_13405" align="alignnone" width="800"]<img class="size-full wp-image-13405" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/DSC_8812_800x541.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="541" /> Kate Fry and Tina Muñoz Pandya in THE MOUSETRAP. Photo: Michael Brosilow.[/caption]

At the same time, <em>The Mousetrap</em> implicates all of us in the breakdown of social safeguards and shared compassion that made the death of a child like Dennis O’Neill possible. As we hear Detective Trotter say, “One might almost believe that you’re <em>all</em> guilty by the looks of you.”<a href="#_edn17" name="_ednref17">[17]</a> The play’s designed to work on our sense of collective guilt—“We must have done something,” Mollie says<a href="#_edn18" name="_ednref18">[18]</a>—and Christie preys on our gnawing dread that the supports which failed the vulnerable before may yet fail them again, either because we’ve chosen to run away from our own complicity, or because we’ve turned our backs on it and willed ourselves to move on. For <em>The Mousetrap</em>, this is a central proposition: when we refuse to face up to the role that we’ve played in the collapse of our communal responsibilities, we are haunted and hunted by those who’ve been hurt by our negligence. And the dangers of our negligence are matched only by the dangers of our bias. Christie offers us ample room to indulge myopic assumptions about the people around us, only to pointedly turn those assumptions against us, and show us what heels we are for having held those assumptions in the first place.

The recurring references to macabre nursery rhymes in the play leave the audience a breadcrumb trail back to the fairy-tale cruelty of the Goughs on Bank Farm, and out of that nightmarish landscape the characters struggle to find a path that puts childhood behind them once and for all. “You’ve got to grow up some time,” we hear Mollie say to Chris. “You can’t go on being looked after all your life.”<a href="#_edn19" name="_ednref19">[19]</a> Artfully, Christie poses these questions about responsibility, complicity, and adulthood within the framework of the theater’s space of play, where actors make believe and audiences sit together for story time in trusting wonder. But the theater is also a space of ritual, where we gather as a community to experience collective reckonings with traumatic events. In the end, <em>The Mousetrap</em> urges us toward a bracing release from the horrific circumstances that inspired it. With the tentative prospect for healing that it ultimately proposes, <em>The Mousetrap</em> extends to its audience a succession of open invitations: to be attentive to those who are abandoned or unrooted; to be their caretakers rather than their tormenters; to be welcoming to the stranger; and to protect the vulnerable souls among us.

<hr />

<a href="#_ednref1" name="_edn1">[1]</a> Alison Light, <em>Forever England:</em> <em>Femininity, Literature and Conservatism Between the Wars</em> (London: Routledge, 1991) 63-64.
<a href="#_ednref2" name="_edn2">[2]</a> Susan Rowland, <em>From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell: British Women Writers in Detective and Crime Fiction</em> (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001) vii.
<a href="#_ednref3" name="_edn3">[3]</a> Rowland vii. The work of Rowland and Light have helped to undo the decades-long exclusion of Christie from serious scholarly treatments, and led to a blossoming of monographs in more recent years. Merja Makinen’s <em>Agatha Christie: Investigating Femininity</em> (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006); R. A. York’s <em>Agatha Christie: Power and Illusion</em> (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007); Ed. J. C. Bernthal’s <em>The Ageless Agatha Christie: Essays on the Mysteries and the Legacy </em>(Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016); and J. C. Bernthal’s <em>Queering Agatha Christie: Revisiting the Golden Age of Detective Fiction</em> (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2016) are all brilliant additions to the academic literature about Christie, offering some much-needed counterbalance in the scholarly record.
<a href="#_ednref4" name="_edn4">[4]</a> Julius Green outlines this state of affairs in the opening chapter of his book <em>Curtain Up: Agatha Christie, A Life in Theatre</em> (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), which itself performs an important intervention in the longstanding critical dismissal of Christie’s plays.
<a href="#_ednref5" name="_edn5">[5]</a> See Green 12-15.
<a href="#_ednref6" name="_edn6">[6]</a> <a href="https://www.agathachristie.com/theatre/a-brief-history-of-agatha-christie-and-stage">https://www.agathachristie.com/theatre/a-brief-history-of-agatha-christie-and-stage</a>
<a href="#_ednref7" name="_edn7">[7]</a> <a href="https://www.agathachristie.com/news/2019/agatha-christies-the-mousetrap-the-facts">https://www.agathachristie.com/news/2019/agatha-christies-the-mousetrap-the-facts</a>
<a href="#_ednref8" name="_edn8">[8]</a> Green 1.
<a href="#_ednref9" name="_edn9">[9]</a> Gillian Gill, <em>Agatha Christie: The Woman and Her Mysteries</em> (New York: Free Press, 1990) 207.
<a href="#_ednref10" name="_edn10">[10]</a> See Jacques Barzun and W. H. Taylor, <em>A Catalogue of Crime</em> (New York: Harper &amp; Row, 1971) 7-9 and W. H. Auden, “The Guilty Vicarage,” <em>The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays</em> (New York: Random House, 1962) 157-158.
<a href="#_ednref11" name="_edn11">[11]</a> Gill 205-206.
<a href="#_ednref12" name="_edn12">[12]</a> For a fuller account of the O’Neill children’s time on Bank Farm, see Terence O’Neill, <em>Someone to Love Us: The Shocking True Story of Two Brothers Fostered into Brutality and Neglect</em> (London: HarperCollins, 2010) 84-152.
<a href="#_ednref13" name="_edn13">[13]</a> <em>Daily Mail</em> 20 Mar. 1945, 4am ed.: 1 and <em>Daily Mail</em> 14 Feb. 1945, 4am ed.: 1.
<a href="#_ednref14" name="_edn14">[14]</a> Quoted in Montague Smith, “Shock to the Nation,” <em>Daily Mail</em> 20 Mar. 1945, 4am ed.: 1.
<a href="#_ednref15" name="_edn15">[15]</a> Janet Morgan, <em>Agatha Christie: A Biography</em> (New York: HarperCollins, 2017) 262.
<a href="#_ednref16" name="_edn16">[16]</a> Agatha Christie, <em>The Mousetrap</em> (London: Samuel French, 1954) 29.
<a href="#_ednref17" name="_edn17">[17]</a> Christie 89.
<a href="#_ednref18" name="_edn18">[18]</a> Christie 33.
<a href="#_ednref19" name="_edn19">[19]</a> Christie 67 &amp; 68."
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          string(4814) "[caption id="attachment_13381" align="alignright" width="350"]<img class="wp-image-13381 size-full" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/kateseansmaller.jpg" alt="" width="350" height="467" /> Kate Fry and Sean Graney at the 50th Annual Jeff Awards ceremony. Fry won Best Solo Performance for THE BELLE OF AMHERST.[/caption]

<span style="font-weight: 400;">We wanted to learn more about what drew director <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/sean-graney/">Sean Graney</a> (</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2017-2018-season/the-belle-of-amherst/">The Belle of Amherst</a>,</span></i> <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2009-2010-season/mystery-irma-vep/"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Mystery of Irma Vep</span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">) to Agatha Christie’s famous murder mystery, so we sat down with him before a rehearsal to pick his brain. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Discussing his return to Court and Chicago, Graney shared that one impetus for pitching </span><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-mousetrap/"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Mousetrap</span></i></a><i> </i><span style="font-weight: 400;">to Artistic Director Charles Newell was the opportunity to work with actor <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/kate-fry/">Kate Fry</a> (</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Belle of Amherst</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">) again.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">“I think it’s a great role for her,” he shared, talking about the heroine at the center of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Mousetrap</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">. “It’s a well-written role for a woman by a woman, and I thought that this piece would be a great fit for Court audiences.” </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Fry is joined by an all-star cast including <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/david-cerda/">David Cerda</a>, <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/allen-gilmore/">Allen Gilmore</a>, <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/alex-goodrich/">Alex Goodrich</a>, <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/erik-hellman/">Erik Hellman</a>, <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/tina-munoz-pandya/">Tina Muñoz Pandya</a>, <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/lyonel-reneau/">Lyonel Reneau</a>, and <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/carolyn-hoerdemann/">Carolyn Ann Hoerdemann</a>. “I’m surprised at the depth of character development that the actors are bringing out,” Graney reflects. “I’ve always felt that the play is meaningful and relevant, but it’s still surprising to see just how deep the cast is delving into this world and the characters.”</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">That depth, in part, is thanks to Christie’s writing, which Graney describes as “deep,” “funny,” and “super-duper smart.” It’s also spurred on by Graney’s approach in the room.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">“</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Mousetrap </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">is sort of dismissed as a frivolous mystery,” he explains. “But on top of the mystery, it tells a story about a bunch of people who are living lies and how the lies keep them from being able to connect to each other.” </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">While other productions foreground the play’s plot, Graney wants to do more than just tell a “really cool, well-crafted murder mystery.” Instead, he says, “what’s more important to me is this theme about lies keeping us in isolation. I’m not sure what themes are at the heart of other productions, but I’m telling a dramatic story with a mystery on top of it.”</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">What does he hope audiences will gain from his take on this classic piece of theatre?</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">“What an audience leaves with is whatever magnetizes in their brain while they’re experiencing this production,” he acknowledges. “Maybe people will try to be more truthful with each other. I hope they all have a good time.”</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">And with the cast and team he’s assembled, it’s no mystery whether or not audiences will enjoy this spirited take on an old favorite.</span>

<hr />

<strong>Agatha Christie's <em><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-mousetrap/">The Mousetrap</a> </em>runs through February 16, 2020. <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-mousetrap/">Save your seats →</a></strong>"
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<em>Director <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/drawn-to-the-sea/">Shana Cooper</a> is taking a unique approach to staging <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/">THE LADY FROM THE SEA</a> at Court Theatre. Read on to discover how different directors and actors have brought Ibsen to life on stage and film.</em>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">With such prestige attached to his name, Ibsen’s famous works capture the creative interests of many directors and actors from all over the world as they yearn to tackle his plays in new productions. Performing Ibsen entails a variety of approaches to his texts as living documents capable of being re-contextualized in ways that accentuate their undeniable modernity. The themes explored often connect to struggles audiences everywhere can still identify with. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">In an upcoming UK film production of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(set to release abroad in July 2020 as of now), screenwriter Birgit Myaard and director Leon Mitchell aim to develop their own re-imagination of the play by infusing it with a 21st century touch that exemplifies how Ibsen’s works continue to remain relevant in the modern day. Myaard has said that exploring Ibsen has been a method for her to reconnect with her ancestral roots in Norway due to his depictions of the country and his cultural significance there. The film will feature K-Syran, a Norwegian singer, and will be released with an original soundtrack that conveys a similar mysticism to that found in the play.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">On the stage, directors and actors continue to grapple with the mythos of Ibsen and his famous texts. In 2019, the cast of a staging of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Lady </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">produced by the Norwegian Ibsen Company wanted to immerse themselves in the same surroundings Ibsen was exposed to when writing his play. Actors </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Kåre </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Conradi and Pia Tjelta rehearsed with their cast for their bilingual production of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Lady</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> in the very abode Ibsen lived in at the time of creating it. They appealed to the Norwegian government for this opportunity and were able to bring along their team to rehearse in his former flat at Victoria Terrasse in Oslo. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">To reinforce the divide within the Wangel clan, director Marit Moum Aune chose to re-imagine the doctor and his two daughters as expats from England who were drawn to Norway due to Wangel’s relationship with Ellida, a move that would breed resentment on the girls’ part as they had to upend their lives for their father’s new bride. The Wangels speak strictly in English with one another while Ellida navigates two linguistic worlds, talking in Norwegian with her close friend Arnholm and the locals of her hometown (subtitles were projected onto a wall in the production). The cast immersed themselves in the landscape, visiting places Ibsen reportedly went to and working into the dusk hours to get into a similar headspace as the playwright may have been when creating his work.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">In other Ibsen productions, teams have decided to accentuate the subtle humor laced throughout Ibsen’s work. From Jeremy Raison’s production of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Ghosts </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">that exaggerates and satirizes a character's views on fidelity to Lee Breuer’s </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mabou Mines DollHouse </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(an adaption of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">A Doll’s House</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">) that dabbles with physical comedy as visual representations of gender battles, some directors choose to apply a more jocular touch to Ibsen’s work, lending it a sense of renewed energy as they explore the nuance of the playwright’s social commentary. These different tactics in approaching Ibsen reflect the wide variety of reactions and interpretations his works elicit. The ability to reinterpret and re-imagine these plays is a contributing factor to the endurance of Ibsen’s plays in modern productions.</span>

<hr />

Previews to <em><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/">The Lady from the Sea</a> </em>begin March 12. <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><strong>Learn more →</strong></a>

<em>Photo of Chaon Cross by Joe Mazza.</em>"
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<em>Director <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/drawn-to-the-sea/">Shana Cooper</a> is taking a unique approach to staging <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/">THE LADY FROM THE SEA</a> at Court Theatre. Read on to discover how different directors and actors have brought Ibsen to life on stage and film.</em>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">With such prestige attached to his name, Ibsen’s famous works capture the creative interests of many directors and actors from all over the world as they yearn to tackle his plays in new productions. Performing Ibsen entails a variety of approaches to his texts as living documents capable of being re-contextualized in ways that accentuate their undeniable modernity. The themes explored often connect to struggles audiences everywhere can still identify with. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">In an upcoming UK film production of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(set to release abroad in July 2020 as of now), screenwriter Birgit Myaard and director Leon Mitchell aim to develop their own re-imagination of the play by infusing it with a 21st century touch that exemplifies how Ibsen’s works continue to remain relevant in the modern day. Myaard has said that exploring Ibsen has been a method for her to reconnect with her ancestral roots in Norway due to his depictions of the country and his cultural significance there. The film will feature K-Syran, a Norwegian singer, and will be released with an original soundtrack that conveys a similar mysticism to that found in the play.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">On the stage, directors and actors continue to grapple with the mythos of Ibsen and his famous texts. In 2019, the cast of a staging of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Lady </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">produced by the Norwegian Ibsen Company wanted to immerse themselves in the same surroundings Ibsen was exposed to when writing his play. Actors </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Kåre </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Conradi and Pia Tjelta rehearsed with their cast for their bilingual production of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Lady</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> in the very abode Ibsen lived in at the time of creating it. They appealed to the Norwegian government for this opportunity and were able to bring along their team to rehearse in his former flat at Victoria Terrasse in Oslo. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">To reinforce the divide within the Wangel clan, director Marit Moum Aune chose to re-imagine the doctor and his two daughters as expats from England who were drawn to Norway due to Wangel’s relationship with Ellida, a move that would breed resentment on the girls’ part as they had to upend their lives for their father’s new bride. The Wangels speak strictly in English with one another while Ellida navigates two linguistic worlds, talking in Norwegian with her close friend Arnholm and the locals of her hometown (subtitles were projected onto a wall in the production). The cast immersed themselves in the landscape, visiting places Ibsen reportedly went to and working into the dusk hours to get into a similar headspace as the playwright may have been when creating his work.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">In other Ibsen productions, teams have decided to accentuate the subtle humor laced throughout Ibsen’s work. From Jeremy Raison’s production of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Ghosts </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">that exaggerates and satirizes a character's views on fidelity to Lee Breuer’s </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mabou Mines DollHouse </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(an adaption of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">A Doll’s House</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">) that dabbles with physical comedy as visual representations of gender battles, some directors choose to apply a more jocular touch to Ibsen’s work, lending it a sense of renewed energy as they explore the nuance of the playwright’s social commentary. These different tactics in approaching Ibsen reflect the wide variety of reactions and interpretations his works elicit. The ability to reinterpret and re-imagine these plays is a contributing factor to the endurance of Ibsen’s plays in modern productions.</span>

<hr />

Previews to <em><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/">The Lady from the Sea</a> </em>begin March 12. <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><strong>Learn more →</strong></a>

<em>Photo of Chaon Cross by Joe Mazza.</em>"
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<em>With critics praising <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/">THE LADY FROM THE SEA</a> as a "pre-Freudian folktale" (The Guardian), some Ibsen fans may be wondering how folklore plays a role in Ibsen's play. Read on to learn about the myths surrounding mermaids and selkies and how they influenced Ibsen's writing.</em>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The mysticism surrounding </span><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea</span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> originates largely from the palpable influence of folklore, not only on Ibsen’s creative process but also on modern readings of the play as folklore’s presence in popular culture colors interpretation. Ibsen reportedly drew influence from the natural beauty of his native Norway and was most certainly influenced by myths from his homeland. In modern reframings of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Lady</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, audiences often interpret Ellida as a mermaid-esque figure due to her intense bond with the sea (and her direct characterization as a sea creature). </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Although this connection is undeniable, Ellida does share certain properties with mythical figures beyond the mermaid. In Scandinavian, Scottish, and Irish folklore, selkies are seal folk who, when wearing a sealskin coat, turn into seals and live their lives in the sea. When they shed the coat, they appear to be human and can go on land. Several legends feature selkie maidens trapped on land. In legends, a man lures the selkie to land, steals her coat, and then marries her so she can never return to the sea in her natural form. She spends her life in deep sorrow, her liveliness eclipsed as the joy of the water’s song is muted to her. In several tales, she often dies shortly thereafter as her constricting life on land is something her soul cannot bear. Yet, in a few other stories, she chooses to stay on land, forever locking away her selkie coat and staying for the family she has built.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The striking parallels between Ellida and these mythological figures are apparent not only in their shared love of the water but also how marriage inevitably traps them on land and forces them to confront their situation. Ellida was, in a sense, lured in by Wangel and became trapped in a marriage. Though he did not force marriage upon her, the arrangement was practical at the time so she did not have another socially acceptable reason to deny him. In their marriage, she feels trapped, her daily forays into the sea providing a much-needed outlet, just as the selkie looks longingly at a possible return to their underwater home. When Wangel gives Ellida the freedom to decide for herself, she begins to understand that she is actually valued by both him and her stepdaughters. In essence, she has her selkie coat back but, as it is returned to her and not threatened by force, she gains a measure of clarity in what she now values more. Choosing to stay is akin to when the selkie gives up the coat of her own volition and willingly mutes the tantalizing call of her past underwater home.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">These connections to folklore lend </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Lady </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">a degree of enchanting mysticism as it explores more serious topics about social expectations and resulting identity struggles. They also reveal how deeply such tales are ingrained in cultural consciousness and their pertinence to literature and reapplying texts to our own cultural contexts. </span>

<hr />

Previews to Court's production of this mysterious Ibsen play begin March 12, 2020. <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><strong>Learn more about <em>The Lady from the Sea → </em></strong></a>

&nbsp;

<em>Photo of Chaon Cross by Joe Mazza</em>."
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      string(9760) "<em>Ruth Schor, an Ibsen scholar, focuses <span style="font-weight: 400;">on modern drama, theatre and cultural history with particular emphasis on Ibsen and the German-speaking avant-garde. She provides her own perspective on</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"> THE LADY FROM THE SEA</a><em>, providing context about the role of choice in this play and other works by the Norwegian playwright. </em></span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;"><img class=" wp-image-13796 alignright" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Eleonora_Duse_1890.jpg" alt="" width="335" height="482" />“My consolation in moments of spiritual anguish is </span><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea</span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">,” the famous Italian actress Eleonora Duse writes to a friend at the beginning of the twentieth century, “she is beautiful and comforting - ever-changing, like the sea itself.”</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> With this assessment, Duse gets to the heart of the play's problem: is the protagonist, Ellida, free, and if so, what kind of freedom does she have? After a celebrated success playing in and producing Ibsen’s </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Rosmersholm</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Duse embarks on another journey to seek an understanding of Ellida’s freedom. But the translation she has does not suffice and she crosses out the word “choice” and replaces it with the word “decision.” With this small edit, Duse was coming to grips with a central question that dominates discussions about </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> to the present day. Is the freedom to decide true emancipation, or does it lead the woman, as wife, right back into the confinement of marriage? After all, the play has little of the dramatic resistance to domestic life that can be found in other Ibsen plays. This play's “happy ending” is a rarity. Preceded by </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Rosmersholm</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> and succeeded by none other than </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Hedda Gabler</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> has caused puzzlement over its appeasing tone since it was first performed. What makes this woman capable of converting the weight of her past into a source of transformation without escaping? </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Lou Andreas-Salomé, one of Ibsen’s contemporaries, published a book about Ibsen’s heroines from Nora to Hedda in 1892. She finds an explanation in Ellida and Dr. Wangel’s mutual ability to “consider the other’s needs” and attributes an equally healing quality to the re-connection between Ellida and Hilde, Wangel’s child from the previous marriage. If we take this explanation seriously, does Ellida’s story then suggest that reconciliation is the true goal, and in fact there was hope for some of Ibsen‘s previous heroines? In short, the play calls into question the actions of other heroines. Why did Hedda Gabler have to crush that same hope? Are we meant to reconsider Nora’s exit in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">A Doll’s House</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">? These are only some of the unresolved questions Andreas-Salomé leaves us with. </span>

[caption id="attachment_13797" align="alignleft" width="371"]<img class=" wp-image-13797" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/small-1.jpeg" alt="" width="371" height="534" /> Anna Bloch as Hilde in THE LADY FROM THE SEA.[/caption]

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Despite its more conventional plot, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">does join Ibsen’s other plays in its openness to ambiguity. Similar to </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">A Doll’s House, The Lady from the Sea </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">presents its audience with an outcome that seems conclusive, and yet, leaves just enough inconclusive openings to fuel the imagination about what might come next. In </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">,</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">this question mark is brought to us by the next generation</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">—</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">through Bolette’s subplot, a marriage of convenience in exchange for an education. And most decisively, in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Master Builder</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, a play Ibsen published four years after </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea, </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">the same Hilde Wangel appears as a young temptress in her twenties who has escaped her father’s “cage” </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">—</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> with no mention of a stepmother. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">At this point, even Lou Andreas-Salomé needed to reconsider. A few months after her book came out in 1892, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Master Builder</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> was published. She hastily writes a review admitting that the re-appearance of Hilde Wangel sheds new light on the ending of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">. A century later, Susan Sontag takes the significance of Hilde Wangel’s return even further. Her adaptation for Robert Wilson’s famous production concludes with a sense of unease about the domestication of this sea creature. Ibsen, she claims, made Hilde Wangel reappear in the later play, when he developed second thoughts about </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea.</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Originally titled </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Mermaid</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Sontag says, the play draws on a folkloric theme about untamable sea creatures that do not belong on dry land. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Whichever interpretation one might be drawn to, it is evident that </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea,</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> and moreover Ibsen’s plays in general, continue to generate a sense of mystery and curiosity by remaining in constant conversation with each other. It is arguably one of Ibsen’s most distinct talents to ensure an audience never gets too comfortable. As he expressed it himself, his works can only be understood when read in their entirety </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">— </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">when read as part of an ongoing series. Ibsen perfectly timed this series by publishing a new play every two years just in time for the Christmas season. By the time he wrote </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, the arrival of the plays had become a national sensation in his native Norway. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Living in Munich at the time, amidst a milieu of theatre-makers, cultural innovators and thinkers</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">—</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">many women amongst them</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">—</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Ibsen’s plays fueled discussions at coffee houses and literary salons like few others. It is therefore the continuation of this Ibsenian journey to ask ourselves where this play could be taking us today, and how it makes us reconsider our own sense of freedom. Just as we become comfortable with this interpretative direction, Ibsen’s notes on </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> take us in yet another direction. Perhaps the play is a prelude to a different humanity entirely. He writes: “Has the path of human development taken the wrong direction? How did we come to belong on dry earth? Why not the air? Why not the ocean?”     </span>

<hr />

Court's production of <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><em>The Lady from the Sea </em></a>runs from March 12 - April 12, 2020. <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><strong>Learn more and buy tickets →</strong></a>

<span style="font-weight: 400;"><strong>Ruth Schor</strong> completed her PhD at the University of Oxford and subsequently worked as Associate Professor at the Centre for Ibsen Studies, University of Oslo. Her research focuses on modern drama, theatre and cultural history with particular emphasis on Ibsen and the German-speaking avant-garde. She is currently completing a monograph on the significance of Ibsen's work in creating an avant-garde culture in Munich and Berlin for which she received a Martin Buber Fellowship. Her chapter on the German Ibsen reception will shortly be published in the volume <em>Ibsen in Contex</em>t by Cambridge University Press. She is also a theatre practitioner and has worked with a number of international theatre companies. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span>"
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<em>Director <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/shana-cooper-2/">Shana Cooper</a> is known for her visceral takes on classic plays. Her work with frequent collaborator and choreographer <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/erika-chong-shuch/">Erika Chong Shuch</a> on Shakespeare’s plays utilizes movement to inject each production with a physical muscularity that matches their use of language. We chatted with Cooper to discuss what excites her about Ibsen’s <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/">THE LADY FROM THE SEA</a>.</em>

<strong>Court Theatre: <em>The Lady from the Sea</em> marks your first full-length production in Chicago. Can you talk to us a bit about what it means to be working here?</strong>

<strong>Shana Cooper:</strong> This is my first full-length production in Chicago, yes. I workshopped a staged reading of Paula Vogel’s play <em>Cressida on Top</em> at Goodman Theatre, but other than that I’ve yet to do a full play. Charlie [Court’s Marilyn F. Vitale Artistic Director] and I have been talking for years and this theatre has felt like a beacon to me. My background is primarily in Shakespeare and I’ve long known Court for its national reputation for innovative reimaginings of classic work.

<strong>CT: <em>The Lady from the Sea</em> is a classic play, but is written by Ibsen; not Shakespeare. What drew you to this particular play?</strong>

<strong>SC:</strong> This is a play that’s been with me for about ten years. I first directed a staged reading of it in 2009 at Oregon Shakespeare Festival and I haven’t been able to shake it since. It’s haunted me.

<strong>CT: What aspects have haunted you the most?</strong>

<strong>SC:</strong> The thing that’s really remained with me about it is the visceral way Ibsen captures the nature of struggling with who you are spiritually and discovering a different sense of self over the course of your life. That idea of self-discovery and exploration is much more terrifying and exhilarating than people are able to express it being, but Ibsen was clearly obsessed with our nature with free will.

<strong>CT: How are those ideas informing your approach to his work?</strong>

<strong>SC:</strong> One of my goals with Shakespeare is an interest in how to make these plays as muscular physically and emotionally as they are linguistically, and that’s one of my goals with this production, too. I have an extraordinary choreographer Erica Chung Shuch who’s a longtime collaborator with me. My hope is that as a company we can come up with a physicality to express these ineffable urges that the play deals with. My dream is that it’s a marriage of Ibsen’s brilliant dramaturgy, character, and language as well as a physical life that gets at the deeper yearnings buckling under the text that are hard to express. I hope it feels like we are expressing something new.

<strong>CT: What would you share with fans of Ibsen who’re unfamiliar with this piece but may have seen or read some of his other works, like <em>A Doll’s House</em> or <em>Hedda Gabler</em>?</strong>

<strong>SC:</strong> A major difference between <em>The Lady from the Sea</em> and <em>A Doll’s House</em> is that this is Ibsen’s first return to a more expressionistic landscape, and it’s one of his plays that’s actually set outdoors. There’s a fluid nature to reality and a mystery to the play that reflects our unconscious. It seems like it requires a theatrical production because of the fluid and sometimes nightmarish way that he’s expressing that volatility through the characters and the jagged relationship with the fjords.

You also get to see a writer wrestling with a new way of expressing himself, which makes it messier than some of his other works. It’s exciting to work on these kinds of plays because you get to see a great artist wrestling with how their artistic goals are changing, and so you get to see that revolutionary spirit in everyone working on the play, too.

<strong>CT: What do you hope that audiences take away from seeing <em>The Lady from the Sea</em>?</strong>

<strong>SC:</strong> My hope is that this play is an invitation to look at our own lives and life choices and identity and maybe view this idea of cracking open questions about our spirituality and our identity as a real possibility. The thing that’s brilliant about this play is that it’s quite true-to-life to me. The play is an invitation for us to reflect back on our lives in terms of how the small and large choices we make are at play with and against our free will.

I want to tell a story that young, modern women in particular can connect to and be thrilled by and learn from and have exciting conversations inspired by it. They’re on my mind.

<hr />

Performances of <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><em>The Lady from the Sea</em></a> begin March 12, 2020. <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><strong>Learn more and save your seats →</strong></a>

&nbsp;

<em>Photo of Chaon Cross by Joe Mazza</em>."
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      string(4969) "<span style="font-weight: 400;">The work of one of modernism’s central figures is prime material for various adaptations. With the play’s enduring themes, filmmakers around the world have seized the chance to direct their own rendition of </span><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea</span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Adaptations provide insight into the changing perceptions of the play and how a piece of theatre can withstand the test of time to continue enrapturing audiences. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;"><img class=" wp-image-13759 alignleft" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/starquest.jpg" alt="" width="222" height="302" />In 1954, an Argentine production of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, called </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">La Dama del Mar</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, went to the silver screen. In 1922, an Italian production </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">La Donna del Mare </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">was also created. This far-reaching presence of Ibsen betrays the enduring relevance of his plays. This work has also been adapted for other mediums, such as the ballet </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Kvinnan från havet</span></i> <span style="font-weight: 400;">from choreographer Birgit Cullberg. Soaring operatic works have appeared at festivals from Scotland to China. The sci-fi movie </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Star Quest </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">directed by Vic Alexander is also loosely based on the play, featuring a woman from the stars who comes to Earth and marries a scientist but is forced to choose between two paths when a figure from her past returns.</span>

<i><span style="font-weight: 400;"><img class="size-full wp-image-13758 alignright" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/JAWS_Movie_poster.jpg" alt="" width="256" height="389" />Planet Ibsen </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">is a dramatic film adaptation centering around Ibsen’s infamous rivalry with August Strindberg. It takes the figure of Strindberg and plops him in one of Ibsen’s own plays with the ultimatum that he must rewrite it in order to change his life in reality. The film plays with themes found in Ibsen’s works, such as the nature of choice and its consequences. Carl Gottlieb, the co-screenwriter of the film </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Jaws</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, even once claimed that he and Spielberg drew inspiration for the blockbuster from Ibsen’s play </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">An Enemy of the People</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The motifs of this play connect audiences of entirely different backgrounds in a thoughtful examination of the social institutions that inevitably bind them together. The complexities of relationship dynamics and cultural pressures on the individual remain relevant points of modern-day discourse, ensuring the continued presence of Ibsen in the academic field and beyond.  </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">As for Ibsen the person, the controversial figure went into a self-imposed exile to Italy after finding extreme dissatisfaction with his life in Norway, despite his professed love for the country. He did eventually return, though nearly three decades later. He is considered the father of modernist theatre, and with this title comes the adulation of both him and his works. In 2006, a puppet play about the playwright called </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Death of Little Ibsen </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">premiered and was even performed that same year at the International Ibsen Festival of Norway.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The legacy of Ibsen’s works continues to touch the stage and beyond. This palpable permanence and the gravity of his motifs ensure that his plays remain relevant and performed throughout the world. Audiences continue to be enraptured by the nuanced characters and lasting effects of Ibsen on media, as exemplified by plays like </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">and countless others</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></i>

<hr />

Ready to dive into <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><em>The Lady from the Sea</em></a>? Previews begin March 12. <strong><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/">Learn more</a><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"> →</a></strong>"
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      string(124) "How have Ibsen and THE LADY FROM THE SEA influenced other aspects of pop culture? Find out in this blog about Ibsen on film."
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      string(4484) "[caption id="attachment_13747" align="alignright" width="260"]<img class="wp-image-13747 " src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Henrik_Ibsen_portrait-199x300.jpg" alt="" width="260" height="392" /> Portrait of Henrik Ibsen[/caption]

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Henrik Ibsen was a Norwegian playwright in the 19th century who became well-known throughout the world for his significant influence on decades of authors and playwrights after him. Considered the father of realism, he holds a place in history as a founder of modernism in theatrical works. His plays, often considered quite controversial when published in the morally stringent 19th century, were and continue to be widely discussed beyond just an academic setting. </span>

<a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea </span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">was written in 1888, inspired by the Danish ballad </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Agnete og Havmanden</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">. In the ballad, a young woman named Agnete meets a merman who rises from the sea and promptly offers a marriage between them. She goes with him, embarking on a domestic journey underneath the waves as she and her husband make a new family of seven children. However, one day she hears the church bells from above the water and decides to revisit her homeland. Upon returning, she decides to leave her underwater family forever and once again live on land. The tale is so famous that underwater artwork depicting Agnete’s abandoned family was installed in Denmark</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Although Ibsen drew inspiration from it, the tale of Ellida Wangel is significantly different, yet just as enduring for its powerful motifs and a marked departure from Ibsen’s typical characterization. Motifs of free will, marriage, and the necessity of reconciling dreams with reality permeate the play and their presence ensures it remains startlingly relevant no matter the time period. </span>

[caption id="attachment_13751" align="alignnone" width="800"]<img class="wp-image-13751 size-full" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/small-scaled-e1582143710747.jpeg" alt="" width="800" height="569" /> Scene from a 1901 production of THE LADY FROM THE SEA in Berlin.[/caption]

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Ibsen is a figure who led a remarkable life himself. The man who would go on to produce works that are often only outperformed by Shakespeare was born in the Norwegian town of Skien to an opulent household, though this material prosperity disappeared so that the rest of his childhood and part of his adult life was spent in poverty. His natural talent burgeoned in the face of his responses to the social and political occurrences of the time. Events of his own life, such as his political activism, his eventual self-imposed exile, his affairs with younger women, and his eventual marriage to another woman all influenced his plays. The beauty of the Norwegian landscape and local tales also captivated him. His mystique even captured the imagination of artist Edvard Munch, whose paintings hosted subject matter that was markedly influenced by Ibsen’s characters.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Upon its release, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lady from the Sea </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">was considered less shocking in comparison to Ibsen’s other plays. However, as Ibsen was notable for doing, the play still challenged the state of Norwegian society at the time, focussing on themes other playwrights overlooked, such as marital unfulfillment, the life of an artist, and grappling with stifling social expectations when trying to formulate one’s individual identity. In the modern-day, Ibsen fanatics and the newly-initiated can all recognize </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Lady </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">as a moving and powerful testament to theatre’s ability to critique and change social norms.</span>

<hr />

<em><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/">The Lady from the Sea</a> </em>hits Court's stage March 12. <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-lady-from-the-sea/"><strong>Learn more and save your seats →</strong></a>"
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      string(8244) "<span style="font-weight: 400;">As part of its 66th season, Court Theatre is thrilled to announce the continuation of its commitment to staging each play in <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/august-wilson/">August Wilson</a>’s American Century Cycle; a musical based on a short story by Doris Betts; and the culmination of Court’s ambitious Oedipus Trilogy. Court’s 66th season also features the return of director <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/vanessa-stalling/">Vanessa Stalling</a> and an intimate new take on one of <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/william-shakespeare/">Shakespeare</a>’s most famous tragedies.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">“As Court Theatre enters a new decade of producing plays which redefine the notion of classic theatre, I am thrilled to present a season that showcases a cadre of prolific playwrights,” says </span><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/charles-newell/">Charles Newell</a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Court's Marilyn F. Vitale Artistic Director. “It’s my belief that our 2020/21 season and the passionate artists collaborating on these plays will breathe new life into the rigorous questions each playwright poses about our world, underscoring why the classics have a powerful role to play in contemporary society.”</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">“Our 2020/21 season features an exciting array of classic titles and playwrights,” says </span><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/angel-ysaguirre/">Angel Ysaguirre</a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Executive Director of Court. “These plays are classics because our communities continue to imbue them with meaning and relevance and I'm eager to see how our artists and audiences shape meaning out of these plays.”</span>

<b>Explore the 2020/21 Season:</b>
<h2><b>August Wilson’s </b><b><i>Two Trains Running
</i></b><b></b></h2>
<b>Directed by Resident Artist <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/ron-oj-parson/">Ron OJ Parson</a>
</b><b>Performance Dates: September 3 - October 4, 2020</b><b>
</b><b></b>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Amidst the Civil Rights Movement, Memphis Lee’s restaurant is slated for demolition. While Memphis fights to sell his diner for a fair price, the rest of the restaurant’s regulars search for work, love, and justice as their neighborhood continues to change in unpredictable ways. </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Two Trains Running </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">explores Black identity in the 1960s with passion, humor, and prescience, demonstrating why Wilson is one of America’s most essential voices. With his singular point of view, Resident Artist <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/ron-oj-parson/">Ron OJ Parson</a> directs the penultimate play in Court’s ongoing commitment to staging all of Wilson’s American Century Cycle.</span>
<h2><b><i>Violet
</i></b><b></b></h2>
<b>Music by <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/jeanine-tesori/">Jeanine Tesori</a>
</b><b>Book and Lyrics by <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/brian-crawley/">Brian Crawley</a>
</b><b>Based on </b><b><i>The Ugliest Pilgrim</i></b><b> by Doris Betts
</b><b>Directed by <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/charles-newell/">Charles Newell</a>
</b><b>Music Direction by <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/tom-vendafreddo/">Tom Vendafreddo</a></b><b>
</b><b>Performance Dates: November 5 - December 6, 2020</b><b>
</b><b></b>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">In 1964, a young Southern woman travels to Oklahoma, hoping that a televangelist will perform a miracle to heal the physical scars that have destroyed her confidence. On her pilgrimage, she meets a soldier who holds the promise of a different path to happiness. Based on Doris Betts’ short story, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Violet </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">is brought to life with a complex score of folk, gospel, and blues anthems from Tony Award-winning composer Jeanine Tesori (</span><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2008-2009-season/caroline-or-change/"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Caroline, or Change</span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">). Charles Newell, Marilyn F. Vitale Artistic Director, helms this musical about faith and the true nature of beauty.</span>
<h2><b><i>Antigone</i></b></h2>
<b>by <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/sophocles/">Sophocles</a>
</b><b>Directed by <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/seret-scott/">Seret Scott</a>
</b><b>Performance Dates: January 21 - February 21, 2021</b><b>
</b><b></b>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">In the aftermath of a civil war, Creon shames the rebel Polynices by leaving him unburied on the battlefield. In defiance of the Theban ruler, Antigone plans to bury her brother’s body, risking her life in the process. With intellect and unstinting vision, director Seret Scott stages Sophocles’ exploration of notions of justice. </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Antigone</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> concludes Court’s Oedipus Trilogy, which ambitiously linked three ancient Greek dramas to bridge cultures, cities, and communities. </span>
<h2><b><i>Fen
</i></b><b></b></h2>
<b>by <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/caryl-churchill/">Caryl Churchill</a>
</b><b>Directed by <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/vanessa-stalling/">Vanessa Stalling</a>
</b><b>Performance Dates: March 18 - April 18, 2021</b>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">On the foggy fens of England, the ghosts of the past haunt the women laboring in the fields. Seizing on a new relationship as a potential path to escape, Val leaves the stultifying constraints of work and family behind, only to be confronted with the repercussions of her decision. Employing astonishing theatrical imagery, Caryl Churchill’s </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Fen</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> interrogates issues of gender, class, and exploitation with grace, humor, and anger. Jeff Award-winning director Vanessa Stalling (</span><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2018-2019-season/photograph-51/"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Photograph 51</span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">) returns to Court Theatre to bring her striking clarity and fresh perspective to the play that won Churchill the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.</span>
<h2><b><i>Othello
</i></b><b></b></h2>
<b>by <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/william-shakespeare/">William Shakespeare</a>
</b><b>Adapted and Directed by <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/charles-newell/">Charles Newell</a>
</b><b>Performance Dates: May 13 - June 13, 2021</b><b>
</b><b></b>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Othello, the great Venetian general, unknowingly seals his fate when he fails to select his standard-bearer, Iago, for a military promotion. Implicating Othello’s wife, Desdemona, in an affair, Iago sets forth a series of irreversible events that spell catastrophe for Othello and his country. <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/kelvin-roston-jr/">Kelvin Roston, Jr.</a> and <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/timothy-edward-kane/">Timothy Edward Kane</a> who sparred in </span><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/oedipus-rex/"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Oedipus Rex </span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">return to Court to star in this intimate new take on Shakespeare’s tragedy about jealousy, ego, and betrayal. Marilyn F. Vitale Artistic Director Charles Newell combines Shakespeare’s words with exhilarating movement and elements of the 16th-century story by Cinthio that inspired </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Othello</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, crafting a production that physicalizes the poetry of the original text with raw immediacy.</span>

<hr />

<strong><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/subscriptions/">2020/21 Season Subscriptions are now available for both new and renewing subscribers.</a></strong>"
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      string(3386) "<span style="font-weight: 400;">With her play </span><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-mousetrap/"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Mousetrap</span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Agatha Christie presented what would become a classic murder mystery, brimming with suspicion and paranoia as every possible suspect turns against one another and no one is safe from their past. She also constructed an amazingly accurate guide on exactly what someone should <strong><em>not</em></strong> do if they find themselves as a suspect in a murder investigation. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">From running away to breaking down about how you never meant to do something, all the characters exhibit some outward sign of guilt that points to them. Based on the characters' reactions, we compiled a list of things you probably don't want to do if you are innocent but find yourself under scrutiny in an Agatha Christie murder mystery. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;"><em>*Please note this does not constitute formal legal advice and is only inspired by this magnificent tale of Christie’s.</em></span>

<img src="https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2017/08/25/21/47/confused-2681507_960_720.jpg" alt="Confused, Hands, Up, Unsure, Perplexed, Young" />

<strong>Don't Say Cryptic Stuff</strong>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Don’t bring up things relating to the case. If the murderer is known for being obsessed with </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Three Blind Mice</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, don’t start singing it randomly as you enter a room. Don’t reply in a weird, insinuating way to people’s comments and then laugh maniacally.  </span>

<img src="https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1486218119243-13883505764c?ixlib=rb-1.2.1&amp;ixid=eyJhcHBfaWQiOjEyMDd9&amp;auto=format&amp;fit=crop&amp;w=1000&amp;q=80" alt="man running on road near grass field" />

<span style="font-weight: 400;"><strong>Don't Flee</strong></span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Running away is sometimes a sign of guilt. If you are innocent, then you do not need to flee from the accusations. It’s a stressful situation, we know, but just breathe and stand your ground. Unless you might be the next murder victim. Then maybe consider leaving.</span>

<img src="https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2012/04/05/01/08/long-25529_960_720.png" alt="Long, Nose, Lying, Emoticon, Face, Eyes, Yellow" />

<span style="font-weight: 400;"><strong>Don't Lie</strong></span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Lying makes everything worse. It’s an age-old adage, and it remains pertinent in this situation. Don’t give vague answers like you were brushing your hair in your room when you obviously weren’t and then proceed to get huffy about it. </span>

<img src="https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2015/09/08/17/35/man-930397_960_720.jpg" alt="Man, Fashion, Model, Fashion Man, Sunglasses, Cool" />

<strong>Don't Mock the Investigation</strong>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">This attitude tends to make you seem like you feel superior to the investigation and that vocalized disrespect attracts a lot of attention.</span>

While a murder investigation can be stressful, it's important to not lose your cool. Keep the above tips in mind and you'll be able to maintain your innocence with ease."
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      string(17418) "<em><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13390" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/stmartins_800.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="300" /></em>

<em>The Mousetrap</em> by Agatha Christie is the longest continuously running play in the history of commercial Western theater, having officially opened in London on November 25, 1952, in a production that, after more than 28,000 performances, runs to this very day. Christie wrote her first version of the story on a commission from the BBC for a new radio play to honor the 80<sup>th</sup> birthday of King George VI’s mother, Queen Mary, in May 1947. Titling it <em>Three Blind Mice</em>, she reworked the script into a novella, published in <em>Cosmopolitan</em> in 1948, then wrangled it back into a play, expanding it to its current length. Before it opened, she renamed it <em>The Mousetrap</em> in a winking reference to the play-within-a-play in <em>Hamlet</em>.

[caption id="attachment_13279" align="alignright" width="252"]<img class="size-full wp-image-13279" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Agatha_Christie_in_1925.jpg" alt="" width="252" height="318" /> Agatha Christie, 1925[/caption]

Box-office records for <em>The Mousetrap</em> have done little to secure Agatha Christie critical esteem. In venerable precincts of established criticism and scholarship, Christie’s works, more often than not, have been written off, even derided, as middlebrow, formulaic, conservative, or just for fun. Alison Light calls attention to the unusual intensity of this animus in her landmark book <em>Forever England</em> from 1991: “There is something about Agatha Christie... which seems to mark her out for an especially cold shoulder and the particularly gratuitous insult. It may be respectable to write about Conan Doyle or even Raymond Chandler but Christie remains beyond the pale, the producer of harmless drivel, an unsuitable case for a critic.”<a href="#_edn1" name="_ednref1">[1]</a> A decade later, Susan Rowland echoes Light’s observation in her book about British women writers of detective fiction, noting that, despite having “enchanted millions of readers,” there has been an “inverse relationship” between the enormous popularity of these women writers and the serious critical attention they’ve been given.<a href="#_edn2" name="_ednref2">[2]</a> Rowland sees this lack of engagement with such profoundly influential works as simply “astonishing,” and she expresses mystification at “the refusal to treat these authors as literary artists.”<a href="#_edn3" name="_ednref3">[3]</a> Critical disregard for Christie’s plays has been even more glaring than for her novels. Her contributions to the theater are mostly elided in canonical histories and anthologies of the 20<sup>th</sup>-century British stage or are, at best, addressed with a quick, embarrassed mention of her work en passant.<a href="#_edn4" name="_ednref4">[4]</a> Theater scholarship would seem to either discount her as a populist interloper or apologize for her as not really a playwright. For their part, scholars of detective fiction who actually do take her writing more seriously tend to brush past her plays, waving them off as ungainly, embodied adaptations of novels that are really best read at home.<a href="#_edn5" name="_ednref5">[5]</a>

[caption id="attachment_13396" align="alignleft" width="413"]<img class="size-full wp-image-13396" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/413px-Agatha_Christie_Memorial_cropped.jpg" alt="" width="413" height="599" /> A plaque memorializing Agatha Christie in London's West End.[/caption]

Even so, Christie’s achievements in the theater are nothing short of monumental. She wrote more than 20 plays, and she is the only woman to have ever had three plays running simultaneously on London’s West End.<a href="#_edn6" name="_ednref6">[6]</a> <em>The Mousetrap </em>alone has been presented in 50 different countries and in 27 languages.<a href="#_edn7" name="_ednref7">[7]</a> Agatha Christie is, in the summation of theater producer Julius Green, “the most successful female playwright of all time.”<a href="#_edn8" name="_ednref8">[8]</a> Such accomplishments demand “more complex explanations than that people like a good yarn, or a neat puzzle,” to quote Christie scholar Gillian Gill,<a href="#_edn9" name="_ednref9">[9]</a> and the cultural significance of Christie’s theatrical output deserves serious consideration, free from biases related to gender or genre. Denying that true artistry and literary excellence have played a role in Christie’s prodigious success is mere fatuousness, or else insufferable elitism. Like all masterly playwrights, Christie was an astute observer of people, and she crafted a unique style of dialogue with idiosyncratic rhythms that were hers alone. She was a sophisticated chronicler of the rapidly changing world around her, and built into her stories are morally nuanced cultural commentaries. The genre that she came to define, the English country house murder, in which staid, upper-middle-class comfort is shattered by violence and mayhem, offered Christie the perfect vehicle for tapping into social anxieties that circulated all around her, about class, desire, gender, nationhood, and justice. Devoted readers like cultural historian Jacques Barzun and poet W. H. Auden have held her stories up as classical parables that speak to deep-seated, inarticulable fears and yearnings of her readers and audiences.<a href="#_edn10" name="_ednref10">[10]</a> This ability of popular art to “tap into the collective unconscious,” Gill argues, is what makes stories like Christie’s so compelling to us, and so irresistible.<a href="#_edn11" name="_ednref11">[11]</a> In a word, there’s no shortage of meaningful ideas to explore in Christie’s canon, and the presumption that her worlds are straightforward or simplistic is a miscalculation that we perpetrate at the expense of our own enrichment. If Christie’s stories teach us anything at all, it’s not to trust appearances, and we’d do well to apply that same lesson to how we approach her mysteries, which comprise so much more than just cozy puzzles. Diligently and unassumingly, Christie created strands of narrative that needled away at tensions and sinister frustrations underpinning her social fabric, and nowhere perhaps more so than in <em>The Mousetrap</em>.<img class="alignnone wp-image-13392 size-large" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/collagemousetrap-1024x536.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="536" />

The kernel for the story is an actual event that Christie lifted from the headlines of 1945. The previous summer, 12-year-old Dennis O’Neill and his brother Terence, soon to turn 10, were placed in the foster care of Reginald Gough and his wife Esther on their farm in a remote valley of Shropshire. Bank Farm was an expansive, 70-acre property that the O’Neill boys were forced to work, milking the cows and tending the other livestock. While there, the boys were only ever allotted two to three slices of bread to eat per day, and they were whipped on their open palms for the slightest infractions. When winter came, they were made to strip naked and sprint across the snow-blanketed yard to go bathe in the animals’ icy watering trough. As the boys’ hunger grew more desperate, they took to furtively eating cow feed, and in one especially heartbreaking incident, Dennis was so starved that he lowered himself beneath the udder of a milking cow to to secure nourishment. On the night of January 8, 1945, Mr. Gough punished Dennis for not gathering enough dry firewood. He tied the child, naked, to a bench that was used for slaughtering pigs, and he savagely beat him. As the brothers huddled together in their bed later that night, Dennis lay in so much pain that he was unable to stifle his sobbing. Demanding that the boy keep quiet, Gough burst into their room and punched Dennis’s emaciated body repeatedly with the full weight of his 31-year-old fist. Dennis O’Neill was pronounced dead the next day from acute heart failure caused by blows to the chest.<a href="#_edn12" name="_ednref12">[12]</a>

[caption id="attachment_13398" align="alignright" width="411"]<img class="size-full wp-image-13398" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Agatha_Christie_as_a_child_No_1.jpg" alt="" width="411" height="514" /> Agatha Christie as a child.[/caption]

The Bank Farm case made front-page news in early 1945, as a horrified nation tracked the breathless coverage of the Goughs’ trial alongside headlines like “‘Massacre’ on the Rhine” and “Nazi Purge Coming.”<a href="#_edn13" name="_ednref13">[13]</a> Anguished, soul-searching editorials flooded the pages of newspapers, with writers demanding accountability and begging to know how, on the home front, any such slaying could happen. Abiding concerns over the welfare of working-class children like the O’Neills fueled public outrage, at a moment when foster care itself was already a lightning-rod issue. More than two million British children had been evacuated from sites deemed vulnerable to bombing during the war, and those children were scattered throughout the English countryside, living in foster situations with perfect strangers under the aegis of the same government machinery that allowed Dennis O’Neill to die. The day the Goughs were found guilty and sentenced to prison, the judge expressed utter indignation that their abuse happened “not in a slum, not in a hovel, but in a farm in our countryside in England.” Turning to Reginald Gough, he stated simply, “Your behaviour has shocked the world, has shocked England.”<a href="#_edn14" name="_ednref14">[14]</a>

The tragedy of Dennis O’Neill deeply moved Agatha Christie, who, already upon reading about it in the news, set to work formulating the story that later became <em>The Mousetrap</em>.<a href="#_edn15" name="_ednref15">[15]</a> In the play, the Bank Farm case becomes “the Longridge Farm case,” though audiences in 1952 knew what Christie was referring to. The play offers a response to that harrowing event by laying bare the inadequacies of important institutions that Britons feared were collapsing around them. Marriage, the family, the judiciary, the police, the educational system—all are interrogated in some way by the people of the play, and the soundness of these systems is found to be deficient. It’s not merely out of comedic snobbishness that we hear Mrs. Boyle say, “This country has gone sadly downhill.”<a href="#_edn16" name="_ednref16">[16]</a> Certainly, many in the play’s opening night audience agreed, and the fact that Dennis O’Neill tragically died in the way that he did was seen as evidence that the country was in shambles.

[caption id="attachment_13405" align="alignnone" width="800"]<img class="size-full wp-image-13405" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/DSC_8812_800x541.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="541" /> Kate Fry and Tina Muñoz Pandya in THE MOUSETRAP. Photo: Michael Brosilow.[/caption]

At the same time, <em>The Mousetrap</em> implicates all of us in the breakdown of social safeguards and shared compassion that made the death of a child like Dennis O’Neill possible. As we hear Detective Trotter say, “One might almost believe that you’re <em>all</em> guilty by the looks of you.”<a href="#_edn17" name="_ednref17">[17]</a> The play’s designed to work on our sense of collective guilt—“We must have done something,” Mollie says<a href="#_edn18" name="_ednref18">[18]</a>—and Christie preys on our gnawing dread that the supports which failed the vulnerable before may yet fail them again, either because we’ve chosen to run away from our own complicity, or because we’ve turned our backs on it and willed ourselves to move on. For <em>The Mousetrap</em>, this is a central proposition: when we refuse to face up to the role that we’ve played in the collapse of our communal responsibilities, we are haunted and hunted by those who’ve been hurt by our negligence. And the dangers of our negligence are matched only by the dangers of our bias. Christie offers us ample room to indulge myopic assumptions about the people around us, only to pointedly turn those assumptions against us, and show us what heels we are for having held those assumptions in the first place.

The recurring references to macabre nursery rhymes in the play leave the audience a breadcrumb trail back to the fairy-tale cruelty of the Goughs on Bank Farm, and out of that nightmarish landscape the characters struggle to find a path that puts childhood behind them once and for all. “You’ve got to grow up some time,” we hear Mollie say to Chris. “You can’t go on being looked after all your life.”<a href="#_edn19" name="_ednref19">[19]</a> Artfully, Christie poses these questions about responsibility, complicity, and adulthood within the framework of the theater’s space of play, where actors make believe and audiences sit together for story time in trusting wonder. But the theater is also a space of ritual, where we gather as a community to experience collective reckonings with traumatic events. In the end, <em>The Mousetrap</em> urges us toward a bracing release from the horrific circumstances that inspired it. With the tentative prospect for healing that it ultimately proposes, <em>The Mousetrap</em> extends to its audience a succession of open invitations: to be attentive to those who are abandoned or unrooted; to be their caretakers rather than their tormenters; to be welcoming to the stranger; and to protect the vulnerable souls among us.

<hr />

<a href="#_ednref1" name="_edn1">[1]</a> Alison Light, <em>Forever England:</em> <em>Femininity, Literature and Conservatism Between the Wars</em> (London: Routledge, 1991) 63-64.
<a href="#_ednref2" name="_edn2">[2]</a> Susan Rowland, <em>From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell: British Women Writers in Detective and Crime Fiction</em> (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001) vii.
<a href="#_ednref3" name="_edn3">[3]</a> Rowland vii. The work of Rowland and Light have helped to undo the decades-long exclusion of Christie from serious scholarly treatments, and led to a blossoming of monographs in more recent years. Merja Makinen’s <em>Agatha Christie: Investigating Femininity</em> (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006); R. A. York’s <em>Agatha Christie: Power and Illusion</em> (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007); Ed. J. C. Bernthal’s <em>The Ageless Agatha Christie: Essays on the Mysteries and the Legacy </em>(Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016); and J. C. Bernthal’s <em>Queering Agatha Christie: Revisiting the Golden Age of Detective Fiction</em> (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2016) are all brilliant additions to the academic literature about Christie, offering some much-needed counterbalance in the scholarly record.
<a href="#_ednref4" name="_edn4">[4]</a> Julius Green outlines this state of affairs in the opening chapter of his book <em>Curtain Up: Agatha Christie, A Life in Theatre</em> (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), which itself performs an important intervention in the longstanding critical dismissal of Christie’s plays.
<a href="#_ednref5" name="_edn5">[5]</a> See Green 12-15.
<a href="#_ednref6" name="_edn6">[6]</a> <a href="https://www.agathachristie.com/theatre/a-brief-history-of-agatha-christie-and-stage">https://www.agathachristie.com/theatre/a-brief-history-of-agatha-christie-and-stage</a>
<a href="#_ednref7" name="_edn7">[7]</a> <a href="https://www.agathachristie.com/news/2019/agatha-christies-the-mousetrap-the-facts">https://www.agathachristie.com/news/2019/agatha-christies-the-mousetrap-the-facts</a>
<a href="#_ednref8" name="_edn8">[8]</a> Green 1.
<a href="#_ednref9" name="_edn9">[9]</a> Gillian Gill, <em>Agatha Christie: The Woman and Her Mysteries</em> (New York: Free Press, 1990) 207.
<a href="#_ednref10" name="_edn10">[10]</a> See Jacques Barzun and W. H. Taylor, <em>A Catalogue of Crime</em> (New York: Harper &amp; Row, 1971) 7-9 and W. H. Auden, “The Guilty Vicarage,” <em>The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays</em> (New York: Random House, 1962) 157-158.
<a href="#_ednref11" name="_edn11">[11]</a> Gill 205-206.
<a href="#_ednref12" name="_edn12">[12]</a> For a fuller account of the O’Neill children’s time on Bank Farm, see Terence O’Neill, <em>Someone to Love Us: The Shocking True Story of Two Brothers Fostered into Brutality and Neglect</em> (London: HarperCollins, 2010) 84-152.
<a href="#_ednref13" name="_edn13">[13]</a> <em>Daily Mail</em> 20 Mar. 1945, 4am ed.: 1 and <em>Daily Mail</em> 14 Feb. 1945, 4am ed.: 1.
<a href="#_ednref14" name="_edn14">[14]</a> Quoted in Montague Smith, “Shock to the Nation,” <em>Daily Mail</em> 20 Mar. 1945, 4am ed.: 1.
<a href="#_ednref15" name="_edn15">[15]</a> Janet Morgan, <em>Agatha Christie: A Biography</em> (New York: HarperCollins, 2017) 262.
<a href="#_ednref16" name="_edn16">[16]</a> Agatha Christie, <em>The Mousetrap</em> (London: Samuel French, 1954) 29.
<a href="#_ednref17" name="_edn17">[17]</a> Christie 89.
<a href="#_ednref18" name="_edn18">[18]</a> Christie 33.
<a href="#_ednref19" name="_edn19">[19]</a> Christie 67 &amp; 68."
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      string(4814) "[caption id="attachment_13381" align="alignright" width="350"]<img class="wp-image-13381 size-full" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/kateseansmaller.jpg" alt="" width="350" height="467" /> Kate Fry and Sean Graney at the 50th Annual Jeff Awards ceremony. Fry won Best Solo Performance for THE BELLE OF AMHERST.[/caption]

<span style="font-weight: 400;">We wanted to learn more about what drew director <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/sean-graney/">Sean Graney</a> (</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2017-2018-season/the-belle-of-amherst/">The Belle of Amherst</a>,</span></i> <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2009-2010-season/mystery-irma-vep/"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Mystery of Irma Vep</span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">) to Agatha Christie’s famous murder mystery, so we sat down with him before a rehearsal to pick his brain. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Discussing his return to Court and Chicago, Graney shared that one impetus for pitching </span><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-mousetrap/"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Mousetrap</span></i></a><i> </i><span style="font-weight: 400;">to Artistic Director Charles Newell was the opportunity to work with actor <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/kate-fry/">Kate Fry</a> (</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Belle of Amherst</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">) again.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">“I think it’s a great role for her,” he shared, talking about the heroine at the center of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Mousetrap</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">. “It’s a well-written role for a woman by a woman, and I thought that this piece would be a great fit for Court audiences.” </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Fry is joined by an all-star cast including <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/david-cerda/">David Cerda</a>, <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/allen-gilmore/">Allen Gilmore</a>, <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/alex-goodrich/">Alex Goodrich</a>, <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/erik-hellman/">Erik Hellman</a>, <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/tina-munoz-pandya/">Tina Muñoz Pandya</a>, <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/lyonel-reneau/">Lyonel Reneau</a>, and <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/people/carolyn-hoerdemann/">Carolyn Ann Hoerdemann</a>. “I’m surprised at the depth of character development that the actors are bringing out,” Graney reflects. “I’ve always felt that the play is meaningful and relevant, but it’s still surprising to see just how deep the cast is delving into this world and the characters.”</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">That depth, in part, is thanks to Christie’s writing, which Graney describes as “deep,” “funny,” and “super-duper smart.” It’s also spurred on by Graney’s approach in the room.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">“</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Mousetrap </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">is sort of dismissed as a frivolous mystery,” he explains. “But on top of the mystery, it tells a story about a bunch of people who are living lies and how the lies keep them from being able to connect to each other.” </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">While other productions foreground the play’s plot, Graney wants to do more than just tell a “really cool, well-crafted murder mystery.” Instead, he says, “what’s more important to me is this theme about lies keeping us in isolation. I’m not sure what themes are at the heart of other productions, but I’m telling a dramatic story with a mystery on top of it.”</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">What does he hope audiences will gain from his take on this classic piece of theatre?</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">“What an audience leaves with is whatever magnetizes in their brain while they’re experiencing this production,” he acknowledges. “Maybe people will try to be more truthful with each other. I hope they all have a good time.”</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">And with the cast and team he’s assembled, it’s no mystery whether or not audiences will enjoy this spirited take on an old favorite.</span>

<hr />

<strong>Agatha Christie's <em><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-mousetrap/">The Mousetrap</a> </em>runs through February 16, 2020. <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/season-tickets/2019-2020-season/the-mousetrap/">Save your seats →</a></strong>"
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  <h1>Blog</h1>
  
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      <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/ibsen-in-performance/"><img class="blog-teaser__img" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ibseninperformance_sq.jpg" alt="" /></a>
      <div class="blog-teaser__body">
        <h3 class="title"><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/ibsen-in-performance/">Ibsen in Performance</a></h3>
        <p>Discover how different directors and actors have brought Ibsen to life on stage and film.</p>
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      <article class="blog-teaser">
      <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/ibsen-folklore-and-myth/"><img class="blog-teaser__img" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/mermaidblog_sq.jpg" alt="" /></a>
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        <h3 class="title"><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/ibsen-folklore-and-myth/">Ibsen, Folklore, and Myth</a></h3>
        <p>Learn more about how folklore inspired THE LADY FROM THE SEA, one of Ibsen's most mercurial plays.</p>
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    </article>
      <article class="blog-teaser">
      <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/her-choice/"><img class="blog-teaser__img" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/hilde_sq.jpg" alt="" /></a>
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        <h3 class="title"><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/her-choice/">Her Choice</a></h3>
        <p>Ibsen scholar Dr. Ruth Schor reflects on the role of choice in the playwright's canon.</p>
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      <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/drawn-to-the-sea/"><img class="blog-teaser__img" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/drawntosea_sq.jpg" alt="" /></a>
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        <h3 class="title"><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/drawn-to-the-sea/">Drawn to the Sea</a></h3>
        <p>Director Shana Cooper discusses the play that has “haunted her” for more than a decade.</p>
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      <article class="blog-teaser">
      <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/ibsen-in-popular-culture/"><img class="blog-teaser__img" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/jaws_Sq.jpg" alt="" /></a>
      <div class="blog-teaser__body">
        <h3 class="title"><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/ibsen-in-popular-culture/">Ibsen in Popular Culture</a></h3>
        <p>How have Ibsen and THE LADY FROM THE SEA influenced other aspects of pop culture? Find out in this blog about Ibsen on film.</p>
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      <article class="blog-teaser">
      <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/the-father-of-modern-realism/"><img class="blog-teaser__img" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/ibsen_sq-1.jpg" alt="" /></a>
      <div class="blog-teaser__body">
        <h3 class="title"><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/the-father-of-modern-realism/">The Father of Realism</a></h3>
        <p>Learn more about Ibsen's work as a playwright and founder of modern drama.</p>
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      <article class="blog-teaser">
      <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/announcing-our-2020-21-season/"><img class="blog-teaser__img" src="" alt="" /></a>
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        <h3 class="title"><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/announcing-our-2020-21-season/">Announcing Our 2020/21 Season</a></h3>
        <p>Presenting a season that showcases a cadre of prolific playwrights.</p>
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    </article>
      <article class="blog-teaser">
      <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/what-not-to-do-when-youre-a-murder-suspect/"><img class="blog-teaser__img" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/whatnototdo.jpg" alt="" /></a>
      <div class="blog-teaser__body">
        <h3 class="title"><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/what-not-to-do-when-youre-a-murder-suspect/">What (Not) To Do When You&#8217;re a Murder Suspect</a></h3>
        <p>Find out what you shouldn't do if you find yourself in an Agatha Christie murder mystery!</p>
      </div>
    </article>
      <article class="blog-teaser">
      <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/a-closer-look-beyond-gender-and-genre/"><img class="blog-teaser__img" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/stmartins_sq.jpg" alt="" /></a>
      <div class="blog-teaser__body">
        <h3 class="title"><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/a-closer-look-beyond-gender-and-genre/">A Closer Look: Beyond Gender and Genre</a></h3>
        <p>Production Dramaturg Derek Matson delves into the history surrounding Agatha Christie's THE MOUSETRAP,  making the case that the author's examinations of society are often overlooked by critics.</p>
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    </article>
      <article class="blog-teaser">
      <a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/sean-graney-on-staging-agatha-christies-the-mousetrap-at-court-theatre/"><img class="blog-teaser__img" src="https://www.courttheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/kateseansmaller.jpg" alt="" /></a>
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        <h3 class="title"><a href="https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/sean-graney-on-staging-agatha-christies-the-mousetrap-at-court-theatre/">Sean Graney On Staging Agatha Christie&#8217;s THE MOUSETRAP at Court Theatre</a></h3>
        <p>We wanted to learn more about what drew director Sean Graney to Agatha Christie’s famous murder mystery, so we sat down with him before a rehearsal to pick his brain. </p>
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