Presenting a groundbreaking account of an audacious theatrical undertaking

Created by the Norwegian/German duo of Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller, the Ibsen-Saga (2006–present) is a six-hundred-year project to restage Henrik Ibsen’s entire oeuvre. Andrew Friedman presents a groundbreaking historical narrative of this project’s development and dramaturgy, through the theories and practices of modernism’s most influential and controversial artists, including Henrik Ibsen, Richard Wagner, F. T. Marinetti, Erwin Piscator, and Jackson Pollock. Vinge and Müller treat Ibsen’s plays as the urtexts of a mythical struggle between artistic vision and material limits, which they explore through analogous narratives ranging from Hamlet to World Cup soccer matches, all unified by a singular aesthetic that juxtaposes totalizing fiction and extreme reality. As Friedman shows, they mythologize Ibsen’s themes of artistic ambition to resurrect and test modernism’s fantasies of artistic autonomy, totality, creative license, and provocation.

By reading Vinge and Müller’s project through its modernist inspirations, Friedman demonstrates the material and ethical limits of modernist ideals in current theatrical practice, providing new perspectives on the legacy of these pioneering figures. Ibsen Apocalypse is a bold, cross-disciplinary reappraisal of the persistent power of modernity in contemporary performance.
 

Theatre Things: Material Theories and Histories considers key theatrical objects through a comparative approach, examining the uses and histories of different parts of the theatre throughout time and across culture and geography. The ten “theatre things” at the heart of the book are: entrances, tickets, programs, concessions, seats, lights, curtains, stages, trapdoors, and exits. For every object, three different scholars offer short chapters that examine it from different angles—across eras, places, and performance traditions to result in a set of diverse and provocative accounts of the many ways objects have functioned throughout theatre history. Written in an accessible style, the book draws on real examples from theatre history around the world to reveal that even the smallest details—where you sit, how the lights shift, what the program says—carry meaning. Whether you’re a regular theatregoer or a curious fan, Theatre Things offers a fresh way to look at the spaces and objects that shape every night at the theatre—and makes them feel newly interesting long after the curtain call.