Rolf Alme
scenographer
The Sons of Postfeminism
"THE SONS OF POSTFEMINISM" by Rolf Alme, Teatr Polski, Wroclaw, Poland 2010
The play "Noras Sons" was translated to Polish as I was invited to stage it at the Teatr Polski in Wroclaw. As Ibsen's play "Nora" was not well known in Poland the translator changed the title into "The Sons of Postfeminism". – An interesting challenge occurred during the work as I understood that the social and cultural conditions for the text; the adult sons of independent feminist women, simply didn't exist in Poland. If such boys existed, they were probably playing in the kindergarten as their mothers, independent feminist women as we know them in Scandinavia, were not older than 25 if they existed at all in catholic Poland. So my actors couldn't really pretend to be the characters of the play. We staged the play as a "reading". In this way the actors could play with the fact that the words and statements didn't really come from them and they could "comment" on the text of the play. Sometimes they had to "search" for ways of saying something making it relevant for a Polish society. We played in a humorous way with the concept that the actors gradually became convinced about the radical statements of the play and thereby also convincing the audience.