by Henrik IbsenTranslated by Paul WalshDirector Carey Perloff
Sponsor for the 2016 season of the Tom Patterson Theatre
Production support is generously provided by Nona Macdonald Heaslip and by Alice & Tim Thornton.
Support for the 2016 season of the Tom Patterson Theatre is generously provided by Richard Rooney & Laura Dinner.
2016: Kate Keller in All My Sons and Mrs. Gunhild Borkman in John Gabriel Borkman. 29th season. Stratford: 29 seasons at Stratford include Mrs. Hardcastle (She Stoops to Conquer), Mary Stuart, Judith Bliss (Hay Fever), Mrs. Sullen (The Beaux' Stratagem), Elora (The Thrill), Masha (Three Sisters), Dolly (Hello, Dolly!), Anna (The King and I), Nana (For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again), The Blonde, the Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead, Regan (King Lear, Tony-nominated production), Rosalind, Viola, Portia, Lady Macbeth, Beatrice, Desdemona, the Duchess of Malfi, and the popular cabaret series Late Night with Lucy. Elsewhere: Winnie in Happy Days at the National Theatre School and Paulina in Groundling Theatre's The Winter's Tale in Toronto. Queen Lear at the University of Northern Colorado. Author of Limericks by Lucy Peacock as the Duchess of Malfi: Written as She Lay Dead on the Stage.
2016: Banquo in Macbeth, Duke Frederick in As You Like It and John Gabriel Borkman in John Gabriel Borkman. 22nd season. Stratford: Favourites include last season's Epicure Mammon in The Alchemist, Gloucester in King Lear, Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls, Iago in Othello and the title role in Macbeth. He also directed the 2001 productions of Henry IV, parts 1 and 2, and last season's The Adventures of Pericles. Elsewhere: He recently played in Andrew Kushnir's Wormwood at the Tarragon Theatre. Et cetera: Mr. Wentworth is a Tony-nominated actor, a director and playwright whose work has been celebrated on Broadway, in London's West End, on television, in films and in theatres across the U.S. and Canada.
2016: Malcolm in Macbeth, William in As You Like It and Erhart Borkman in John Gabriel Borkman. Fourth season. Stratford: Lysimachus (Pericles), Dapper (The Alchemist), Guhl (The Physicists), Lewis, the Dauphin (King John), Swiss Cheese (Mother Courage), Mardian (Antony and Cleopatra), Prince of Aragon (The Merchant of Venice), Planchet (The Three Musketeers), Paris (Romeo and Juliet). Elsewhere: Mercutio (Romeo and Juliet), Touchstone (As You Like It), Stefano (The Tempest) (Repercussion Theatre); Fox (Pinocchio), Goat, Soldier (Alice Through the Looking-Glass) (Geordie Productions); Justin (Jesus Jello) (Sheep in Fog); Galoshin (Provincial Anecdotes) (Concordia University). Film/TV: Boucherie Halal (Babek Aliassa), Open (Tom Abray). Voice: Kojiro Sasaki, Samurai Warriors 2 (KOEI). Training: Birmingham Conservatory, Concordia University, Dawson College. Awards: 2014 Michael Mawson Award; 2013 Peter Donaldson Award; 2010 Elsa Bolam Award. Et cetera: "Thank you to my family and friends for your continued support and to all the mentors, teachers and coaches who have helped me along the way."
2016: Sir Stephen Scroop, Sherriff, Blunt in Breath of Kings: Rebellion, Lord Chief Justice, Lady Northumberland, Alice in Breath of Kings: Redemption and understudy in John Gabriel Borkman. Fourth season. Stratford: Kate in The Little Years, Katherina in The Taming of the Shrew, Olga in Three Sisters. Elsewhere: Happy Place, The Gigli Concert (Soulpepper); How Do I Love Thee? (Canadian Rep); The Bakelite Masterpiece, The Little Years (Tarragon Theatre); Manon, Sandra and the Virgin Mary (Buddies in Bad Times); Escape from Happiness, Better Living, Fighting Words, The Glace Bay Miners' Museum (Factory Theatre); Age of Arousal (Alberta Theatre Projects); Possible Worlds, directed by Yoshi Oida (Canadian Rep). Film/TV: Cardinal, Rookie Blue, Reign (CTV); Murdoch Mysteries, Republic of Doyle (CBC); Carrie (MGM); Breakout Kings with Academy Award-winning director Gavin Hood (A&E). Awards: Dora Awards for Outstanding Performance in The Little Years (Tarragon), The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (Birdland Theatre), The Leisure Society (Factory Theatre). Dora nomination for How Do I Love Thee?
2016: Duncan in Macbeth, Joe Keller in All My Sons and Vilhalm Foldal in John Gabriel Borkman. Ninth season. Stratford: 2015 season: The Diary of Anne Frank, She Stoops to Conquer and The Last Wife. Joseph was part of the Stratford company from 1983 to 1987, acting in Love's Labour's Lost, Henry IV, Part 1, A Midsummer Night's Dream, King Lear, Twelfth Night, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, Pericles, Measure for Measure and many others. In 2000 he directed Paul Gross as Hamlet, and in 2009 he appeared in Morris Panych's play The Trespassers. Elsewhere: Founding member of Soulpepper, where he has directed and acted in many plays, including Our Town, Death of a Salesman and A Christmas Carol. He has had a long association with the Shaw Festival, as an actor and as director of plays such as When We Are Married, Harvey, Major Barbara and Widowers' Houses.
Playwright: John Gabriel Borkman.
Henrik Johan Ibsen was born in Skien, a Norwegian seaport, on March 20, 1828. His parents were Knud Ibsen, a successful merchant, and Marichen Cornelia Martine Altenburg, an enthusiastic amateur painter. The family's fortunes declined over the years, however, and in 1835 they had to give up their home to move into a small farmhouse.
In 1843, the teenaged Ibsen left home to apprentice with a pharmacist named Jens Aarup Reimann in the town of Grimstad. There, in 1846, he fathered an illegitimate child with Reimann's maid, Elise Sophie Jensdatter. Though he did not marry Elise (who was considerably older), he did provide their son with financial support.
In 1850, he moved to Kristiania (now Oslo), hoping to study toward a degree in medicine; the same year, he completed his first play, a verse tragedy called Cataline, which he published under the pseudonym Brynjolf Bjarme. It was rejected by the Kristiania Theatre, but his second play, the one-act The Burial Mound, received the first of three performances there on September 26, 1850.
The following year, Ibsen found a position as resident playwright and director at Det Norske Theater (The Norwegian Theatre) in Bergen, newly founded by the violinist Ole Bull to develop Norwegian playwrights. During this time, he wrote four more plays and gained invaluable experience of the practicalities of work in the theatre.
In 1857, he returned to Kristiania to become artistic director of the Norske Theater there, and the following year he married a pastor's daughter, Susannah Thoresen, with whom he had a son, Sigurd, in 1859. However, the Kristiania Norske Theater went bankrupt in 1862, and in April 1864 Ibsen left Norway for Italy. For most of the next 27 years, he and his family continued to live abroad, in Italy and Germany, returning to Norway only for short visits.
Most of Ibsen's best-known plays, beginning with Brand in 1866 and Peer Gynt the following year (produced in Kristiania with incidental music by Edvard Grieg), were thus written in self-imposed exile. They include A Doll's House (1879), Ghosts (1881), An Enemy of the People (1882), The Wild Duck (1884), Rosmersholm (1886), The Lady from the Sea (1888) and Hedda Gabler (1890). These were followed, after the playwright's return to Norway in 1891, by The Master Builder (1892), Little Eyolf (1894), John Gabriel Borkman (1896) and his last play, When We Dead Awaken (1899).
Ibsen's 70th birthday in 1898 was marked by extensive celebrations in Kristiania, Stockholm and Copenhagen. In 1900, he suffered the first in a series of strokes, which left him no longer able to write. He died on May 23, 1906.
Translator: John Gabriel Borkman.
Paul Walsh is a professor of dramaturgy and dramatic criticism at the Yale School of Drama. He served for nine years as senior dramaturge at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater, where his translations of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (2004) and Hedda Gabler (2007) were produced.
His translation of Ibsen's The Master Builder premièred at the Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley, California, in 2006 and was revised for production at the Yale Repertory Theatre (2009) and the People's Light & Theatre Company in Philadelphia (2011). His translations of August Strindberg's Chamber Plays were produced in San Francisco by the Cutting Ball Theater in 2012, and his translation of Strindberg's A Dreamplay premièred there this spring.
In addition, Walsh has worked as dramaturge, translator and co-author with theatre companies across the U.S., including Theatre de la Jeune Lune, where he collaborated on such award-winning productions as Children of Paradise: Shooting a Dream, Don Juan Giovanni, Germinal and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Walsh received a doctorate in drama from the Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama at the University of Toronto.
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