"Calamity West is one of the best playwrights in Chicago. Or maybe the country. Or the universe." - Chicago Reader
IBSEN IS DEAD
World Premiere
Interrobang Theatre Project, 2014
Written by Calamity West
It's November 9, 1989 and The Berlin Wall is coming down for the entire world to see. A husband is reading of the deconstruction in the paper over a breakfast of scrambled eggs. A wife is hearing of it while shopping for couture. An old friend is watching it on a television window display on a street in Manhattan. And a doctor is sleeping right through it. Inspired by A Doll's House, THE DOLL'S HOUSE PROJECT: IBSEN IS DEAD explores and welds the genius of Henrik Ibsen and the grit of Calamity West in this world premiere play about deception, love, lies, class and gender.
REVIEWS
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"Calamity West—an author rapidly forging a reputation for restitching classics into whole new cloth, rather like making a quilt—challenges us (in a good way)...to re-examine Ibsen's heroine in the context of our own cultural mandates. Whatever your conclusions, you're unlikely to ever see Ibsen's original ( which you might want to re-read ) in quite the same way." again.
" The play is no screed, but West doesn't hide her disdain for Nora, either, played by Jenifer Henry Starewich, whose vacant expression suggests little more than a cypher at first. But gradually you realize that blank look might just be an exercise in massive self-control, of a woman repressing everything. Because to unleash it all would ruin a perfectly superficial existence."