‘A Doll’s House’ — A little space, a lot of drama

Local actor Aasne Vigesaa is making a specialty of playing oppressed women of the late 1800s.

This weekend, she'll star in a new production of Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House" at the Hoogland Center for the Arts. the play, presented in association with over the Moon Productions, opens at 8 p.m. Friday.

Since New Year's Eve, she has been presenting the one-woman show "the Yellow Wallpaper" at the Vachel Lindsay Home State Historic Site. Based on the short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, it's about paternalistic attitudes toward — and maltreatment of — women suffering with what we now call depression.

"A Doll's House" was controversial when it opened in 1879. Calling into question the traditional roles of men and women in marriage, it's considered an early landmark of feminist literature.

the story centers on a secret that the childlike Nora (Vigesaa) has kept from her husband, Torvald (Kevin Purcell, who directed Vigesaa in "the Yellow Wallpaper"). Years ago, in order to save him from an illness, she obtained a shady loan by signing her father's name to a document.

now that she's close to paying it off, the person who loaned Nora the money decides to blackmail her. Nora willingly plays the silly, helpless dependent around her husband, an appearance she would not be able to maintain were he to learn of the loan.

"She's always had strong men around her, and one of the ways that she was able to get her way and manipulate them was to be silly and to be flirty and to be a squirrel and a bird and the things that they call her in the play," Vigesaa said.

"It's very easy to tap into my playful side and just let that go and be out there. and pretend that I don't know how insidious it is. and then it changes," she said.

the threatened revelation of Nora's secret drives the play and sparks other revelations, eventually pushing Nora to question her entire situation in life.

'Moving from the unknown into certainty'

to direct the show, members of the over the Moon ensemble turned to Luke Daniels, Vigesaa's brother-in-law. Based in Cleveland, he acts in corporate training videos, records audio books and teaches acting at Case Western Reserve University.

Daniels said he likes the play because each character changes, not just protagonist Nora.

"They all go through this period of moving from the unknown into certainty about something in their lives," Daniels said.

"We all deal with that: wanting to know ourselves, not fully knowing ourselves, seeking out how we can know ourselves better and be our own true, authentic self," Daniels said.

the play will be staged in the Club Room at the Hoogland Center. It's an intimate way to experience drama, with the audience on three sides of the playing area and the actors so close that microphones are not necessary. It's not how the play would have been seen when it was written —back then, the action would have been framed behind the proscenium arch, with a clear line between actors and audience.

"it was exciting to pull it out of that older style into a more modern thrust, where we have the action happening right in our laps," Daniels said. "it also felt to me an opportunity to be a lot more truthful."

the show can be melodramatic, but Daniels said the staging should help work against that. because of the confines of the space, actors cannot make the broad gestures they might in larger venues.

"This is a little more realistic, a little more authentic to how people actually behave," Daniels said.

in addition to over the Moon regulars Purcell and Vigesaa, other performers in "A Doll's House" include James Daniels, Linda Schneider and Nicole Sylvester.

There's also Missy and Eric Thibodeaux-Thompson, respectively playing Nora's friend Christine and the ailing Dr. Rank. the two are the sole members of the theater faculty at the University of Illinois Springfield.

"It's summer, and I get to be an actor — just an actor," Missy Thibodeaux-Thompson said. Earlier this summer, she and Eric acted in separate plays at the Shawnee Summer Theatre in southern Indiana. she played Truvy in "Steel Magnolias"; he was Albert in Jeff Daniels' "Escanaba in da Moonlight."

"I get to practice what I preach and hone my craft and bring it back into the classroom," she said.

'if you fell, you fell hard'

Ibsen's play was set when it was written: Norway 1879. It's often transplanted into other time periods — an off-off-Broadway version Luke Daniels acted in was set in the 1950s, giving it a "mad Men" feel. over the Moon's local production is set in New York City in the 1890s.

"it still stays true to the Victorian era that it was written in, but I also wanted to put it on the cusp of a new world. It's a new city, there's a lot of immigrants coming in — a lot of those old customs, that old world kind-of living, is starting to die out. There's a shift happening," Daniels said.

"For Nora's journey — her changing and breaking those bonds society was stuck with — fit in that time period."

For the production design, Daniels said he was inspired by photographic portraits from the time period.

"They're so different from how we take pictures nowadays," Daniels said. "There's just this power in them, and the men have this look in their eyes. It's a look I equate with the fact that the stakes at that time period were much higher than they are now.

"There's so much in our society — now I know we're going through a lot of stuff that people would disagree with me — but we have a lot to fall back on: there's welfare, there's family, there's other things that can help. but back then, if you fell, you fell hard and you fell far."

Brian Mackey can be reached at 747-9587.

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