An all-night Ibsen slam!

The title page of Ibsen's play, A Doll's House.

With a door slam, a marriage ends. 

In our October 2010 Nuit Blanche exhibit with Laluque Atelier Gallery, artists working in four media examined the enduring significance of Henrik Ibsen's 1879 A Doll's House. Nora, the protagonist of this Norwegian masterpiece, leaves Torvald, her husband of eight years, with the famous "door slam heard 'round the world."

Handle With Care (detail) by N. Laluque;  Chris Cornish and Jane Smythe perform Auditioning for Nora; and Maelstrom, by M. Nieradka.

Visual artist Margaret Nieradka (Maelstrom image top right) set Nora and Torvald amidst the fringes and dust, spangles and rigid gender roles of an idealized Old West. In her haunting mixed media works, Nora is marked 'outlaw' in rhinestones, leaving a desperate Torvald behind to face the maelstrom.

South African film-makers Nadine Hutton and Myer Taub suggested parallels between Nora's relationship with Torvald and that of Africa with colonialism in the remarkable short Nora Leaves A Doll's House (image below).

Chris Cornish and Jane Smythe (top center) gave seven performances of Auditioning for Nora, an Ibsen adaptation by Katherine Bischoping, in which a demanding doll, insisting on being cast in the coveted role of Nora, turns the play's metaphors absurdly literal. Michael Scott was assistant director, and David Nash, the stage manager and master of ceremonies for the evening.

In her Handle With Care installation (top left), Natalia Laluque, the exhibit's peacemaker, commented in clay -- with amazing movable parts! -- on the universality of endings, on the last, fragile moments of contact with a world to be left behind.

We thank the 251 audience members who joined us throughout the nuit, Kent Lam for his photography, Kirill Stepanenko for computer genius, Urban Fare for the chairs, the Ontario Arts Council for the grant to Natalia Laluque, and, especially, the Royal Norwegian Embassy who honoured us with their support!