Six main actors, five understudies and nine weeks of after-school rehearsals, stage building, sound/music designing, and light setting. A word-heavy script with an update in the time period.
If you put these together, the spotlight shines for the last time on the creative and final mainstage show at Rider.
The show “A Doll’s House” was written by playwright Henrik Ibsen and came out in 1879. It will be performed in the Rider Auditorium at 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday plus Saturday at 2 and 7 p.m.
The show focuses on the relationship between Nora and Torvald Helmer, a couple that is looked highly upon by their society and their friends. As the show progresses, a secret is learned about Nora that she kept from her husband. The unscrupulous Krogstad plans to use this against her to keep his job at the bank Torvald manages.
Sophomore Rylee Cargal takes on the main female lead Nora, while junior Logan Beaman plays the male lead of Nora’s husband.
“Nora is a little wife. She is having a good old time with her kids and her husband and she does this very risky thing to save her husband’s life,” Cargal said. “It is frowned upon and she begins to question all of her things and she is like, ‘Oh my gosh, is my life really what it needs to be?’”
“I am a bank manager sometime in the 1950s. I have been married to my wife for eight years, I have three kids with her. I find out she is a felon and get pretty mad,” Beaman said. “Then I find out that it is OK she is a felon and I am like, ‘Oh, I love you.’ Then she dips on me. And I am left alone with the kids.”
While the show was released in the 1800s, there is a difference in the show for the performance these actors are putting on.
When “A Doll’s House” was written, there were social norms and acceptable behaviors written into the show that we today would question and not accept. The role of a mother in the household then is not the same as what we consider being a mother today.
For the performance, theatre teacher Zachary Jackson updated the time to the 1950s, when some social expectations and patriarchal norms were still somewhat present.
Senior Keegan Potter not only is the sound/music designer, but he also plays the character of Dr. Rank.
“He is a relatively melancholic guy. He is the doctor of the town,” Potter said. “He sees a lot of his patients, specifically the Helmers. He is quite close friends with the Helmers and has a bit of a relationship with Nora.”
Being an actor in the show while also being the sound/music designer may seem stressful to some, but Potter does not see it as something hectic for him.
“I have relatively short scenes, and with those scenes, I can memorize my lines pretty fast,” Potter said. “As far as sound designing goes, I have been doing it since last year with ‘Peter and Wendy.’ It is kind of normal at this point.”
Jackson said the students have been putting in a lot of work into the show.
“The show itself is very word-heavy, which has been a challenge for the actors,” Jackson said. “However, the actors have had a great experience in performing strong emotional characters and heavy storytelling. Our actors will make you laugh, gasp, maybe even cry by their powerful performances of this classic play.”
