Before the final at Nanjing University this weekend, University students from all over China had been invited to submit video recordings of their own productions of famous Ibsen plays. Several universities even organized their own Ibsen performance contests to select the best contribution to attend the competition in Nanjing.
The seven finalists who got a chance to show their Ibsen productions to the audience at the Chinese Nordic Cultural Centre in Nanjing this weekend all put on amazing performances, each with their own individual creative expression.
The winning contribution was made by a group of students from China Northwest University, who showed an interesting re-interpretation of the classic Ibsen play “A Doll’s House”.
In this modern Chinese version of the play, it is the husband rather than the wife who takes on the role of a “doll”, while it is his wife who is the decision maker of the family.
In the beginning of the play, she states that she is not willing to give birth to a child. After her husband and parents-in-law plead with her, she finally agrees, but only under the condition that she can leave for a long holiday in Norway immediately after the baby is born.
The play reflects on how young couples who belong to the "one-child" generation in China experience marriage and family life.
The second prize went to a group of students from Shanghai Foreign Studies University. They presented a very entertaining scene from the TV-show “Wow Chi Ca Go”, in which Thorvald Helmer from a dolls house meets the modern Chinese woman.
The first prize of the competition was a trip to Norway, and the opportunity to perform Ibsen in Chinese to a Norwegian audience.
The members of the jury included Professor He Chengzhou from Nanjing University; Shanti Brahmachari, Norwegian theatre director and Wu Xiaojiang, Director of The National Theatre of China.
Consul Per Wiggen from the Norwegian Consulate in Shanghai attended the festival, and thanked Professor He and the Chinese Nordic Cultural Centre for their work to promote Chinese and Norwegian cultural exchange. In his speech he also commended the interest and creativity the students have shown in reinterpreting and adapting the original works of Henrik Ibsen, proving that Ibsen’s plays are still relevant today, more than 100 years after they were written.