Henrik Ibsen wrote Nora or A doll’s house in 1879 as the story of the eponymous heroine’s emancipation, ending in her decision to leave her husband and children and liberate herself from her unhappy situation. Ibsen’s play has been renegotiated and rewritten countless times.

Nora oder Wie man das Herrenhaus kompostiert, however, is not yet another interpretation of Ibsens’s modern classic. For the first time, the focus is not on Nora, but on the history of the house – and the people who live in it: of the maid Helene, the delivery man who has to wait for his short appearance time and again, of nanny Anne-Marie who gave up her own life to work for Nora and raise her children. They all occupy this house and the spaces of these narratives.

The award-winning author Sivan Ben Yishai, one of the most exciting voices of contemporary theatre, focusses on the invisible protagonists of Ibsen’s classic. She disassembles Nora Helmer’s manor, examines the disintegrating construct and challenges fundamental issues: Is it possible to lay perpetually repeated accounts to rest? Can you escape your own life’s story? And plant new narratives?