Delhi Ibsen Festival : Lady from the Sea - Play December 10, 2008

Lady from the Sea - Play. Dir: Un-Magritt Nordseth.
Royal Norwegian Embassy in collaboration with DADA, brings Delhi an unusual festival of six Ibsen plays in brilliant and innovative productions from India, Bangladesh and Norway.

One of the most beautiful of Ibsen's plays because it is concerned with human longing and the use of metaphors and is powerful because the text deals with the idea of personal freedom. What does it mean to exercise one's own free will?

As part of the Delhi Ibsen Festival : 10 - 20 December 2008. Henrik Ibsen's influence on contempory theatre in India, and on playwrighting, was indeed seminal in inspiring a trend towards Realism on the stage from the 1920s onwards, and gave shape to a form of theatre that had no precedence in India. The resurgence of Ibsen worldwide, in the 21st Century, had different echoes. His plays instantly found resonances in the social, political, cultural and psychological spheres of newly emerging democracies, espousing the cause of freedom of thought, liberation of the underdog, and emancipation. To celebrate, and explore the new dimensions of Ibsen's re-birth in the 21st century, the Delhi Ibsen Festival has planned a wide range of activities, to re-position and maximize the impact of Ibsen's plays, and link up with some of the present needs of Indian theatre.

Secondly, by involving scholars to work with and observe the work process of the three Indian directors, possibly a new dynamics between scholars and directors would emerge. It would provide the possibility of dramaturgical support for the directors, by scholars. The results would only be known later, but the idea that dramaturgy in Indian theatre was an integral part of the work process, seemed inevitable. It was finalzed that scholars from Delhi would work with the directors.

Language: Bengali, with english supertitles