zozo's monologue and scene

Starting the scene

Marie and I chose to do a Torvald-and-Nora scene from A Doll's House. In this scene, Torvald comes home to his wife Nora who's trying to persuade him not to fire Krogstad, a lawyer who's blackmailing her. She starts off by trying to butter him up, but he soon figures out what she's after. He explains that he has to fire Krogstad because he calls him by his first name, a "petty" reason in her view. He gets angry and, to show her who's boss, sends off the paperwork then and there. He tries to assuage her fears, not understanding the gravity of the situation, and walks off thinking everything is just fine.

Well our first attempt at tableaux came across as "vaudevillian". We think the tableaux are just going to look overacted for a while until we get some context.

We tried running through it a couple times to see how blocking would work. One thing I'm not sure of is how to manage closeness to her and distance myself at the right moments.

Another issue is figuring out the subtleties relationship between Nora and Torvald. Why has she stayed with him so long when he stifles her? How bad a guy is he? There's temptation to play him up as a wife-beating insensitive clod, but there's another option: What if he really does care about her and sees himself as her caretaker?

posted by Zozo @ 10:48 PM