The Fusion of the Man and His Work: John Gabriel Borkman with Ibsen's Mask

Abstract

Henrik Ibsen is, without a doubt, an icon in the modern, secular sense of the term. One effect of his iconic standing is a recent trend within the tradition of Ibsen in performance. Ibsen is no longer just a playwright. An Ibsen production is not necessarily a staging of a play written by him. It may as well be a staging of a play written – or “pieced together” – by someone else, the plot of which is based on events in Ibsen’s life or the design of which is based on Ibsen’s works. Understandably, Ibsen may in these productions occasionally appear as a dramatic figure, as himself. In the past three decades, this trend has increased in volume, with a preliminary peak in the Ibsen Year 2006. The phenomenon is not at all restricted to Norway. Since 2006, productions like this have been traced in Norway, Mexico, USA, Italy, Argentina, Germany, England, Bangladesh, Japan, Canada, Spain, Sweden and China. The Ibsen character in these productions, if there is one, fulfils a number of dramaturgical functions. He may be portrayed in the form of a doll, a statue, a mute, an actor or an actress with lines of dialogue, of young or old age, thick or thin, tall or small. However, despite the diversity in the physical shaping of the Ibsen character, theatre audiences all over the world recognize the character as Ibsen within a fraction of a second when he enters the stage because of the activation of a set of simple, iconographic elements: whiskers, top hat, overcoat, glasses. When did Ibsen turn into an icon? In his latest book, Ibsen og fotografene, Peter Larsen investigates the phenomenon on the basis of photographs of Ibsen. Scrutinizing all extant portrait Ibsen Studies, 2014 Vol. 14, No. 1, 52–70, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15021866.2014.937152