Blog
AFTERSHOCK - Plan-B Theatre Production
April 04, 2022
Playwright Iris Salazar on creating AFTERSHOCK
This article also appears in the April issue of Catalyst Magazine
I have been attending LDS Singles wards for twenty-four years. Once, while discussing my single status with my sister, we joked about me sitting at a corner across from the LDS Conference Center after a priesthood session. I would sit there alongside the protestors, holding a sign advertising myself as a mid-single LDS female seeking an eternal companion. We laughed and for a moment I thought, "Why not?" And then I thought, "That’s ridiculous." and I decided to write a play about a happily single LDS female instead.
The original version of my play was much lighter with a completely different title. I wanted to tell a funny rom-com-like story of open-minded, independent, single LDS women with all the positive energy I could put into it. I made sure there was nothing offensive, and no swearing. The characters were involved, charitable, and progressive but, when I was done writing, it didn’t sit well with me. It was lacking something and felt a little forced. When it was read in April 2019 in Plan-B’s Theatre Artists of Color Writing Workshop, my fellow playwrights gave me good feedback and constructive criticism. But one comment bothered me: “It’s cute, like Jane Austen cute.” I love Jane Austen and have a major crush on every Mr. Darcy I have ever seen, but I was not interested in writing something cute.
I realized that if I really wanted to write this, I needed to write something more honest and personal. A little discouraged, I sent the script aside.
Jump ahead two years: we’re in pandemic lockdown and recovering from an earthquake.
The first year of the pandemic, social media was full of so many lonely posts, along with expressions of concern and fear. All those feelings combined with all things pandemic were obviously very difficult for many people and I noticed how it affected the single people I knew, particularly those struggling with mental health. Despite being single, I have been fortunate to live with family and not be alone during this time. I was, for the most part, minimally affected by everything going on. Aside from having to work from home and not being able to enjoy outings as usual, I found myself with time on my hands and decided it was time to revisit my script.
I still wanted to focus on a single, LDS female, but the cutesy script from before wasn’t going to do it for me (I never want my plays to be called cute!). So I started over. I wanted anyone seeing it or reading this play to find something to relate to, especially women. This meant bringing up some uncomfortable topics, from pap smears to sexual harassment to mental health, while still honoring my faith and my Mexican heritage.
It meant making Teah, my central character, vulnerable, which was difficult for me to do as a private person.
But had I not, it would be back where it was two years ago: just another “cute” play.
And AFTERSHOCK is anything but.
Iris Salazar’s first full-length play, AFTERSHOCK, premieres at Plan-B Theatre April 7-17 (streaming April 13-17). Visit planbtheatre.org/aftershock for details and tickets.
ZAP 2021 Tier II Application Now Open
March 22, 2021
The Salt Lake County Zoo, Arts & Parks application for 2021 Tier II funding is now open and accepting submissions!
Last year, ZAP Tier II granted over $2.3M to 192 arts and cultural nonprofits that bring vibrant events and activities to all corners of Salt Lake County. The grants are tax payer-supported through a tiny portion of County sales tax and have a big impact. In 2019, ZAP grantees had over 2.5M attendees and over 16,000 events! From cultural festivals to dance performances to art classes, Tier II funding supports something for everyone to love.
The application deadline is May 28 at 5pm. Application workshops will be held online on Wednesday, March 31 (1pm-3pm) and Saturday, April 17 (10am-12pm).
Find funding information, registration for Application Workshops, and the link to the ZoomGrants application on the Tier II page.
Are You Eligible for Funding?
Take our eligibility quiz to see if your organization falls within the main eligibility guidelines and may be eligible for funding!
This quiz is not a confirmation of eligibility. Eligibility does not guarantee funding. First-time applicants should contact ZAP staff before applying.
Have questions? Contact ZAP staff and we are happy to help!
Finding Beauty in Unexpected Places & at Unexpected Times
Center for Documentary Expression and Art
2020 was a hard year for Utah and the nation. The pandemic robbed many people of their accustomed realities, including income, stability, health, and, in the worst cases, life itself. At CDEA, it compelled us to adapt and evolve in troubling circumstances.
We recently completed an eight-week Artists/Scholars-in-Residence program, Reawakened Beauty: The Past, Present, and Future of the Jordan River, which plunged us into uncertainty, caused us to reinvent our residency, and gifted us with glimpses of beauty and serenity in the midst of a global pandemic.
ReAwakened Beauty is a residency we’ve done for many years, albeit under very different circumstances. We love offering the residency because it embraces several of our great passions: environmental rights, writing (poetry and prose), photography, and fieldwork. This year’s residency, conducted in partnership with Brighton High School and TreeUtah, was designed to follow our traditional model of using environmental literature, documentary photography, creative writing, and restoration field trips to introduce students to the Jordan River’s human and natural history.
Brighton High School Wildlife Biology students carry out restoration fieldwork on the Jordan River and photo-document it for possible use in a school exhibit.
Through July and August 2020, we prepared the residency syllabus, but when September arrived with the most unpredictable aspects of the pandemic, all sense of “normalcy” was lost. Under these strange and limiting circumstances we had to find ways to offer content to students online, rather than in person.
There were many times, especially during the residency’s first weeks of remote teaching, when we couldn’t tell if we were speaking to 5 or 35 students. We were not able to hear or see students who were joining us remotely via Google Meet due to privacy protocols. Similarly, we had difficulty connecting with the students who were present in the classroom, but dispersed and not fully visible, due to social distancing requirements. Our experience was akin to speaking into a void.
Still, over time, students started to engage with our materials through brief written remarks and, later, enthusiastic responses to the field trip alongside the Jordan River. As the residency progressed, they opened up in remarkable and beautiful ways through poetry and photography.
A new aspect of the 2020 ReAwakened Beauty that emerged was the introduction of ritual and meditative practices, such as “calling in” and “releasing” the directions and sharing a meaningful poem at the beginning of each session. These practices helped instructors and students situate and “ground” themselves, and allowed us to create “sacred containers” inside which we all felt more safe, held, and supported.
These combined activities (traditional and new) resulted in inspired visual and written work by students, which included haunting self-portraits, discoveries of nature in their neighborhoods, poems that revealed the mysterious life of trees, and images of planting along the Jordan River. Student work reflected all facets of the eight-week residency and illustrated how students pondered their circumstances, responded to uncertainty, and celebrated planting new life in times filled with civil unrest and a raging global pandemic.
Some of the remarkable student work produced during the residency included the combination of writing and photography. Students carried out innovative photography assignments such “Self-Portrait,” “View From My Window,” and “Walkabout,” which allowed them to gain deeper insight into their own circumstances as well as their surroundings.
For the “Walkabout” assignment, we introduced students to the Australian concept of Walkabout, which traditionally refers to a rite of passage in Aboriginal societies, when males, ages 10 to 18, live in the wilderness for as long as six months and make the emotional and spiritual transition into manhood. At Brighton, students were asked to walk around familiar or unfamiliar areas taking photos that might shed new light on their worlds. We also invited students to take their time and pay attention to the small details they encounter.
In the “Self-Portrait” assignment, students explored the difference between selfies and self-portraits and created a self-portrait that explored their place in the world. The assignment was created in direct response to the isolation imposed on students by the school-wide quarantine brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.
For students who embraced the assignments, opportunities emerged to produce unusual and thoughtful work, such as this self-portrait by Noah Turnbridge:
This is how I look when I’m not wearing a mask. In the picture I am dead. I am still breathing but I’m not alive. I can’t find my head. I am like a carved pumpkin with the candle blown out, cold and empty, left outside to rot and then get thrown away.
- Noah Turnbridge
We were similarly surprised by the ways in which students responded to the work of Mary Oliver and Charles Simic, poets that explored the idea of “soul” in nature and going “inside” a tree:
Becoming A Tree
Go inside a tree
That would be my way.
Let somebody else become a bear
Or even a selfless chair.
I am happy to be a tree.
From the outside the tree is a riddle:
No one knows how to answer it.
Yet within, it must be cool and calm
Even though there is lots of noise and talking,
Even though it’s hot outside.
The tree is tall and strong
From the roots up,
Well nourished and well rounded on the inside.
I have seen the trees working together
So perhaps it is not a solo effort;
Perhaps there is a working community under the soil
and above the surface
Telling each other what is going on.
- Hagen Snell
It is a fascinating experience to adapt to new and difficult circumstances only to discover appreciation for unexpected gifts hiding in plain sight: small visual details, poetry, Fremont Cottonwoods swaying in the breeze, the movement of water, and the flight of geese—some of which appear in student photos of field trips:
Year 2020 and the experience of conducting and completing a residency during the COVID-19 pandemic reminds us that the most profound and most memorable experiences of our lives emerge in deeply troublesome times. We will remember this year as one of the most challenging of this new millennium, and also the year in which we received many unexpected gifts of beauty. And for that we are grateful.
Canada geese fly over the 120-acre Jordan River Migratory Bird Refuge restoration site in South Jordan.
Here are some of the key “ingredients” essential for restoration work: long-handled steel shovels, rakes, wheelbarrows, plants, and dedicated people.
Brighton High School Wildlife Biology students and CDEA faculty engage in residency activities: bringing in new plants, planting native species, watering saplings, and documenting the residency process.
Brighton High School Wildlife Biology students clean up after restoration activities at the Jordan River Migratory Bird Refuge in South Jordan.
Center for Documentary Expression and Art is a ZAP grantee and a production and teaching entity. They build nationally-traveling documentary exhibits and teach documentary arts to K-12 students. For more information visit www.cdeautah.org/
on the subject of P.G. ANON
February 10, 2021
by Julie Jensen
How this play came about:
One day a friend of mine was complaining, “You don’t understand,” she said, “what straight women go through: pills, rubbers, pregnancies. Fearful and furious all too much of the time.”
I knew I had my own experiences of fear and fury, and I knew I had never really talked about those experiences or dealt with them in my work. I wondered why.
I began asking friends: had they ever been frightened and furious about the threat of an unintended pregnancy? All women had been, and I do mean all. No matter the age, class, race, marital status, religious affiliation, all women had stories. They shared them with me, on condition of anonymity. Some had never told another living soul their story. Not ever.
Each of them was moved that someone was asking about this subject. They knew it was important, knew such stories were legion, and most of all, they knew the wall of silence that surrounds the subject.
I had the subject, and I’d done the research.
P.G. Anon Actors April Fossen, Emilie Evanoff, Lily Hye Soo Dixon, Tamara Howell.
How to tell this story:
I decided to use three characters, all facing a surprise pregnancies. One is too old, one too young, and one not up to the task of raising a child.
That’s when Pauline, Sheila and Tiffany walked into my life. And for the last two years, they have been in residence. They want their stories told, and they did not let up until I told their stories right.
I worked on the play with Rivendell Theatre in Chicago. I also worked with Plan-B Theatre in Salt Lake.
What I envisioned was a very physical play, fast-paced, chaotic, abstract and busy. I was not striving for realism. I wanted to capture the feeling of the time between suspecting pregnancy and any decision about what’s next. Women are alone at that time, living in two heads, one deeply buried in the present, the other threated by a future turned upside down.
When I had a draft of a play, Plan-B did a fully-staged reading of it. I was very pleased. It worked in the way I had envisioned.
Then Plan-B decided to produce the play as a part of its 30th season. I was flattered, gratified, and excited.
P.G. Anon Director Cheryl Cluff, and Actors Tracie Merrill, Sydney Shoell, Latoya Cameron
And then along came COVID:
During the initial COVID shutdowns, we imagined the epidemic would be over in a few weeks. Instead, more than a year later, almost everything is closed down.
But Plan-B had a plan-b: all the plays in their season would be adapted for audio.
Oh lord, I had to make this abstract, physical, chaotic experience into a play for the ear.
And that’s what I’ve done during COVID. I have made the play into an experience to be heard, not seen. There were trade-offs in the process. But I think I have made the play more authentic, more direct. The characters are closer to the woman next door, the kid down the street, and your sister who went astray.
How it all turned out:
I like the piece. I like it a lot. I think it says what I wanted it to.
I’m also working with first-rate people and a cast from heaven.
What I want from the radio production:
I want us to listen to these women,
and remember
the times in our own lives
when we were frightened and furious.
I’d like us to hear ourselves in others,
even as we hear others in ourselves.
Playwright Julie Jensen is Utah’s most-produced playwright. Plan-B has previously produced her plays SHE WAS MY BROTHER and CHRISTMAS WITH MISFITS. The world premiere of her latest, P.G. ANON, opens Plan-B’s 2021 Audio-Only Subscription Series, streaming February 25-March 7 on our website or on our free app in partnership with Planned Parenthood Association of Utah. P.G. Anon tickets are Pay-What-You-Can. This article also appears in the February online issue of Catalyst.
Recently, ZAP received several calls from Salt Lake County community members asking how they can help support ZAP grantees as we all navigate our current “Stay Safe, Stay Home” surroundings. COVID-19 has had an enormous impact on our private and business communities, and our local arts and cultural nonprofits are no exception. While they are hard at work adapting to these new circumstances, what can be done to continue to support them?
Utah Symphony | Utah Opera stitchers make face masks out of material leftover from the production of “The Little Prince” last year.
Donate to Organizations Directly
Did you know you already support ZAP funding through any purchases you make here in the County? For every $10 in sales tax collected in the County, one penny goes toward ZAP grants, which are distributed annually.
If you would like to contribute more, you can donate to your favorite ZAP grantees directly! The best way to do this is to go to the organization’s website and find their ‘Donate’ or ‘Support’ page. All ZAP grantees are 501(c)3s, so you can make tax-deductible donations to support them. Like ZAP funds, your donations go to help these organizations provide programming, pay their staff, expand their reach, and more.
To find ZAP grantees, visit our Grantee Directory: https://slco.org/apps/zap/
Attend Their Virtual Events
Our local arts and cultural nonprofits are working hard to “Apollo 13” their programming and bring it to you right in the comfort of your living room. There’s already so much available for you to do! You can support their efforts by attending these online events the same way you would their in-person events.
From Virtual Yoga Classes on Instagram Live (every day at 5:30pm, thanks Alta Arts!), to meeting amazing animals (Virtual Indoor Bird Show at 9am with Tracy Aviary on Facebook and Instagram, and Facebook Field Trips with Hogle Zoo at 11:30am on select days), to online dance classes (looking at you Repertory Dance Theatre!), and MORE, many of our 2020 ZAP grantees are working hard to be sure their work can come to you.
Head to NowPlayingUtah’s Virtual Events page for a regularly-updated menu of virtual arts and cultural events.
Rob Reinfurt with Ace Community Enrichment teaches pizza making online
Consider Already Purchased Tickets as a Donation
Many ZAP grantees put on programming that requires a ticket. With events being cancelled or postponed to protect our community during these difficult times, they are working to refund patrons for events that cannot be attended. One way you can support local arts and cultural nonprofits is by considering a ticket you have already purchased as a donation instead of asking for a refund.
Follow Them on Social Media
It may seem little, but you can help support your local arts and cultural nonprofits by keeping up to date with them! With so many changes happening very quickly, our local nonprofits heavily use Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to communicate how they are serving you. Following helps them get their message out there and keeps you in the know of all the cool things happening right now.
Abide By the County's Health Guidelines
By following the health guidelines outlined by Salt Lake County and the State, you help not just our local arts and cultural nonprofits, but your entire community. This includes wearing masks when you are out in public, and staying informed of your community's needs and requirements. More information can be found at https://slco.org/covid-19/.
Wasatch Community Gardens Pivots to Serve Community
May 06, 2020
With Salt Lake County residents sticking close to home as the country collectively weathers a pandemic, Wasatch Community Gardens (“WCG”) is rising to meet the Salt Lake community’s increasing demand for home gardening education and locally produced food. Indeed, this isn’t a phenomenon specific to Salt Lake; gardening is experiencing a surge of popularity across the country (just read here, here and here), and we at WCG want you to know we stand ready to serve!
WCG is no stranger to serving aspiring and seasoned gardeners and veggie growers in the Salt Lake Valley. Affectionately referring to ourselves as “the little nonprofit that CAN,” we celebrated 30 years of empowering people to grow and eat healthy, organic, local food last year. Since 1989, WCG has provided children, adults, and families in Salt Lake County with access to land and education for growing and eating fresh produce, while building and nurturing community connections through gardening and healthy food.
You are likely to have driven past one of the 17 community gardens we operate throughout Salt Lake County. These gardens serve diverse community members, all joined by the common desire of growing their own food. Many of our community gardeners report that their garden plots serve as their key source of nutritious food during the growing months, and we are pleased to make this possible in this particular time of need.
As is the story for many local businesses and nonprofits, WCG has had to adjust its sails for a number of its programs to continue to serve the Salt Lake community in this era of social distancing. That said, we are hustling, getting creative, and bringing many of our services online. Read on for opportunities to join us in getting your hands in the soil.
- Educational workshops - WCG offers 40 workshops from April through October, allowing community members to learn from our passionate and expert educators about a wide range of topics, from soils to organic pest management to tomato growing. Click here to view the line-up! While we have had to cancel many of our offerings in April and May, we presented our “Growing Great Tomatoes” class for tomato-lovers online on April 18, and have the recording available for you HERE. We also have available for you "Increasing Our Resilience Through Organic Veggie Gardening" as a recorded online webinar that you can access HERE.
- Plant Sale at our Green Phoenix Farm - We are proud to organize the “Best Little Plant Sale in Utah” on an annual basis. To keep our community healthy, we moved the annual plant sale to an online format! The plant sale was a big success this year, with all pick-up slots filled after the sale opened online on April 30th. Pick-ups will take place in early May for those who reserved a spot.
We know that community building around healthy, organic, local food happens most effectively in person, but without that option, we're eager to connect with the Salt Lake community in the best way we can. This is true whether you are a new gardener, a green thumb, a student, a refugee, a hobby gardener, or someone who relies on gardening for your food supply.
Please do reach out to us with any needs or questions you may have during this unusual time, and we encourage you to get out to the garden - whatever that space may look like for you. It’s the best medicine there is.
Wasatch Community Gardens is funded in part by residents of Salt Lake County through the Tier II category of the ZAP program. If you would like to learn more about WCG and the opportunities they have coming up, please visit their website.
2021 Tier I + Zoo and 2020 Tier II Deadlines Pushed Back
April 01, 2020
The ZAP program thanks and applauds Salt Lake County's arts and cultural community for its ingenuity and flexibility as circumstances surrounding COVID-19 evolve. Many organizations have moved programming and resources online for the public, which is especially helpful as we remain home in accordance with the "Stay Safe, Stay Home" health order from Salt Lake County, and have served as front line support for our Salt Lake County communities.
In light of the ongoing strategizing efforts of our grantees and potential applicants, the ZAP program has made the decision to extend the deadlines for both the 2021 Tier I + Zoo and 2020 Tier II application cycles.
New Application Deadlines:
2021 Tier I + Zoo Deadline: Friday, June 26 at 5pm
2020 Tier II Deadline: Friday, May 29 at 5pm
- Tier II 2018 Funding Evaluation: Must be completed by the 2020 application deadline to be considered for funding (only for organizations funded in 2018)
- Tier II $15k+ Request Financial Documentation: Due Friday, June 26 at 5pm
Once again, thank you to Salt Lake County's arts and cultural organizations and keep up the incredible work!
We are still fighting, and must: Jenifer Nii’s THE AUDACITY premieres at Plan-B Theatre (NOW ONLINE!)
March 02, 2020
AUDACITY UPDATE:
"The stars aligned for us at Plan-B Theatre to be able to film Jenifer Nii's THE AUDACITY on Tuesday, March 26. Current ticket holders will be contacted directly to receive exclusive access to the stream Saturday, March 28 through Tuesday, March 31.
The stream then opens up to the public, free!, April 1-5 at planbtheatre.org
We would like you to know they have followed every Covid19 protocol since March 13. Since then, they have experienced two building closures (pandemic + earthquake!) and only held 6 rehearsals, none with more than 7 people in attendance, all observing 6' distance. They were only able to pull this off because THE AUDACITY is a one-woman show, April Fossen is an actor without peer, and the design team had the show pretty much complete prior to March 12.
We hope you enjoy Jenifer Nii's lyrical and surprising new play THE AUDACITY, her eighth world premiere with us, our gift to you in this uncertain time."
Jerry Rapier, Artistic Director, Plan-B Theatre
--
Playwright Jenifer Nii proudly calls Plan-B her creative home. She has previously premiered THE WEIRD PLAY, KINGDOM OF HEAVEN (created with Dave Evanoff), THE SCARLET LETTER, SUFFRAGE, RUFF!, WALLACE (created with Debora Threedy) and (IN)DIVISIBLE (a collaboration with 11 other local playwrights) at Plan-B. Her latest, THE AUDACITY, premieres March 26-April 5.
THE AUDACITY began with a story about a woman who dared to carve her own path in life. Josie Bassett lived nearly 90 years in the wilds of eastern Utah, amid cowboys and Natives and outlaws and Mormons. She romanced Butch Cassidy, ran a ranch and rustled cattle, bootlegged wine and whiskey, and sent five husbands packing. She outlived the Great Depression, two World Wars, and the fight for women’s suffrage.
How? How did this woman live this life, at a time when women were audacious for daring to wear trousers?
Josie Bassett, January 17, 1874 – May 1, 1964
THE AUDACITY began with one woman’s feat - her determination and independence, her stubborn unwillingness to submit or compromise. What emerged during my research, though, became much more. Josie didn’t just HAPPEN. She was, in so many ways, built and shaped - by her fiercely independent mother, who showed her how to ride, rope, and lead; by her younger sister Ann, a rival to keep her sharp who reigned over a gang of rustlers; by her father who honored the strength and ambition of his wife and daughters; and by a culture that, in pushing against her, taught her to push back.
Playwright Jennifer Nii
What emerged was a call to arms. I have realized while working on this project that the same audacity the Bassett women displayed is what is required of women today. The obstacles have not changed, nor has the opposition weakened. Women must still defend the sanctity of their bodies, choices, and ambitions. We are still fighting, and must.
This realization changed the way THE AUDACITY developed. One woman’s story became THE women’s story. The perspective of the past grew to include the now. New characters emerged in the play - modern women speaking alongside their historical sisters about what it is, and what it takes, to live the life they choose. What it takes to be audacious.
Tumbleweeds Film Festival for Kids coming up March 6!
February 28, 2020
Ethan Morris, Utah Film Center
Media literacy begins at the young age of 4-years-old and is becoming an increasingly important lifelong skill. In response to this, Tumbleweeds Film Festival for Kids, the Mountain West’s longest-running international film festival for families, was founded by Utah Film Center Executive Director Patrick Hubley in 2011. It offers access to curated media that teaches empathy, critical thinking, and shows diverse perspectives.
Patrick believes that, “This year's slate of films will take audiences on a thought-provoking, imaginative, and empowering journey around the world. International films make up the majority of the program and we are thrilled to explore and discuss the universal themes alongside our young viewers.”
This year, Utah Film Center has expanded Tumbleweeds to two weekends, March 6-8 & 13-15, with public screenings and festival field trips March 9-12. All public events including free film screenings and clubhouse activities will be held at the Salt Lake City Public Library.
In addition to culturally-enriching curated films, audiences can participate in media arts workshops and explore a variety of free clubhouse activities designed to balance visual content, active play, and critical thinking, empowering them to tell their own stories.
Festival workshops are designed to connect kids with experts and give them the tools to enhance their storytelling. This year workshops on claymation, special effects makeup, sound effects, augmented reality, and storytelling will allow attendees to craft their own works of art and gain a new perspective on the media they consume.
Media education offered by Tumbleweeds also reaches a diverse student audience through festival field trips. In 2020, our goal is to have public school students make up 50% of total festival attendance. Students and educators attending festival field trips engage with filmmakers, industry experts, and receive standards-aligned study guides for use in the classroom. Last year, 37% of field trip attendees were from Title 1 schools.
One educator who participated in a Tumbleweeds Festival Field Trips last year commented, “We loved the Tumbleweeds experience! The documentary was everything we hoped for and more for our students!... When we take students out of the school to learn and research we refer to it as Fieldwork not field trips because our goal is for students to assume the role of researchers and experts. It is a hands on growth mindset practice, so your workshops were a vital component of our purpose for the day at Tumbleweeds. Thank you so much for this wonderful learning opportunity for our students! We are constantly amazed at how closely what you are accomplishing at The Utah Film Center coordinates with our [expeditionary learning] model!”
Utah Film Center fully believes that educational and cultural opportunities like Tumbleweeds festival field trips should be available to all students regardless of location and income. For the past two years, staff have been focused on developing partnerships that encourage engagement from under-resourced communities, such as refugees, immigrants, students living near the poverty level, and students living in rural communities. Partnerships, with the Refugee Services Office, for example, help us understand the barriers to participation for Tumbleweeds, including transportation and admission.
If you would like to participate in Tumbleweeds Film Festival for Kids, festival passes and tickets can be purchased here.
Please contact our development office at development@utahfilmcenter.org, 385-240-2124 if you would like donation or sponsorship information.
We hope to see you and your family at Tumbleweeds!
Salt Lake Acting Company's A Doll's House, Part 2
February 28, 2020
Written By Nancy Borgenicht, Director of A Doll's House, Part 2
If you’ve never read or seen A Doll’s House by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, you still may have heard of it---that really old play about Nora Somebody who slams the door and leaves her husband and children. Shocking when it was first seen in 1879 Copenhagen---shocking still. It was a revolutionary work of domestic realism ---the first of its kind--- taking us into the marriage of a 19th Century middle-class Norwegian family. It changed theatre forever. Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is now 141 years old and continues to be one of the most performed plays in the world.
Lucas Hnath, Playwright
Lucas Hnath, DHP2 playwright ----pronounced “Nayth,” loves Ibsen. Hnath asked himself the same question audiences have been asking the past hundred plus years: When Nora Helmer slammed the door and left--- what happened to her? Hnath wanted to get inside Ibsen’s skin. Hnath found a bad translation of A Doll’s House online and started cutting and pasting Ibsen’s dialogue, re-writing it his own way. He spoke to women scholars, read George Bernard Shaw’s essays on marriage, and found inspiration in the Greeks and their love for argumentative dialogue. He kept futzing and playing until he got to the essence of what he wanted to say about marriage, divorce, family. He culled his characters down to four: Nora, the wife; Torvald, the husband; Anne Marie, Nora’s childhood Nanny and now her children’s Nanny; and Emmy, Nora’s grown daughter, whom she left when Emmy was four. DHP2 premiered at South Coast Rep and on Broadway in 2017.
So. It’s fifteen years later---1894--- and Nora comes back! Why and what’s become of her? In those days, a woman on her own, could be a seamstress, a factory worker, a clerical worker, a prostitute, or a wife. Divorce was rare, shameful, one lost the respect and weight of one’s name, a scandalous black mark that lasted a lifetime. Norwegian public records from 1894 list only seven divorces! The husband, of course, could divorce in a snap. The wife had to prove infidelity, impotence, desertion--- or that, thanks to her husband, she now had syphilis. The husband had absolute custody of the children no matter who left whom. A married woman could not sign a loan, a bank check, a contract, an agreement of any sort. Had she come into the marriage with money, it now belonged to her husband. Women could not vote, could not own property, were treated like little dolls who could not think for themselves.
In DHP2, Nora has lived now for fifteen years as an unmarried woman under an entirely different set of legal and societal rules. Using a pseudonym, she becomes a well-known feminist writer who believes women should leave unhappy marriages. That life is about to be shattered. She is being threatened by a Judge whose wife left him after reading Nora’s books. He digs into Nora’s past and discovers she is a fraud and still married. He is determined to ruin her. Turns out Torvald has never divorced her. She comes back, determined to get that divorce.
Hnath has said in interviews that one doesn’t need to know Ibsen’s A Doll’s House to see DHP2. And no question, DHP2 stands on its own. For us though, the beautiful audacity of Hnath to take on this hugely famous iconic play and character --- gave us no choice but to immerse ourselves in the original. Turns out it’s riveting. You also see why every serious actress dead or alive has played Nora or wants to play her still. The original, as well as DHP2, asks the same questions: Is marriage a viable institution? Is it even necessary? What do men want? What do women want? What does the world want and why is the world so often wrong? Can it ever be a good thing to leave or be left? How much has changed? How much has not changed?
Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is also very much about not talking. “We never talk,” Nora says, minutes before she leaves and slams the door. DHP2 is all about talking! It is a two-person verbal boxing match between Nora and Anne Marie; Nora and Torvald, Nora and Emmy. We are witnesses to four points of view where no one wins and everyone is right.
DHP2 is funny, sad, ridiculous, tragic, brave, sweet, loving, stupid, hurtful, selfish, touching, maddening---like life. DHP2 moves like a bullet train. You are totally transported into 1894 Norway ---but for some micro seconds, you may find yourself right here, right now! It’s a trip. Thank you so much for coming. Vote.
Salt Lake Acting Company's A Dollhouse, Part 2 runs through March 8. For more information and tickets, visit: https://www.saltlakeactingcompany.org/this-season/item/1470-a-doll-s-house-part-2