Nora's Empowerment: Adaptation of Acting Style in a Doll House

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2012/05/14 Monologues of Nora’s Power: An Adaptation of Acting Style in A Doll House By adapting the acting style of the characters in my production of Ibsen’s A Doll House I will show how people abuse their power upon realizing that their situation has become advantageous. I will use a scene from Act 1lines 534-616 to show that Nora takes advantage of her situation when she becomes aware of how powerful her husband is soon to be. When this realization occurs in a scene, time will freeze on stage and Nora will come out to address the audience with a monologue. The first time we see Nora abuse her situation is when she disregards her conversation with Dr. Rank and Mrs. Linde about the “sick society”. Instead she says “it's perfectly glorious to think that we have--that Torvald has so much power over so many people” (1.587-589). Upon hearing that Krogstad has relations to the bank, Nora realizes how positions of power have shifted in her favour albeit indirectly so. After that line, Nora will have an inner monologue laughing about how the tides have turned on her “biggest fear” and how she is in a position of higher power. Next we see Nora take advantage of her newfound power by revealing that she wants to confess her unspoken thoughts to Torvald. Nora hesitantly says, “It’s something I should dearly love to say, if Torvald could hear me… No, I daren't; it's so shocking” (1. 604-607). Nora in her drunken stupor believes that she is untouchable and abuses this position by almost revealing her true relationship with Krogstad to Torvald. After Mr. Helmer walks into the scene, in the following monologue we see Nora scolding herself for almost revealing the truth “too soon”, before she was in the actual seat of power. Nora noticing her new position of power led to her abusing it. Initially we see her showing no concern to her surroundings and later on she almost
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