Quotes About Ibsen

I can always do theater; I can do Ibsen, I can do Macbeth, I can do Chekhov, I can do Moliere, Othello, I can do Richard III.

When I started in the theater, I'd do plays by Shakespeare or Ibsen or Chekhov, and they all created great women's roles.

Gemma Arterton in 'The Master Builder' at the Almeida - she was absolutely brilliant. Ibsen is difficult and quite hard to follow, but she just brings the stage to life.

It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this life

I enjoy all forms of writing, but playwrighting is what made me what I am. Not only working with the ghosts of Chekhov and Ibsen and Shakespeare, but what it is to be a playwright, to be interacting with human beings in the live theater and affect people on such a direct, emotional level.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an actor in classics like Shaw and Shakespeare and Chekov and Ibsen.

The social world of Ibsen's plays is greatly restricted, enclosed in a narrow frame, cut off by the very geography of Norway; the long, dark winters make for social repetition…Everyone else you know is right there, so to speak. This small-town life has moral consequences always; the players live with the threat of trouble over the most petty matters.

When I saw 'Legally Blonde' on Broadway, I rang my agent and said 'I want to be seen for this,' but the rest weren't big choices, really. 'Hedda Gabler' was a phone call offering it to me, and as I've said before quite embarrassingly, I didn't know the play, so I didn't sit there thinking 'I would now like to tackle Ibsen.'

Jeg har aldri i mitt liv skrevet slibrig; men jeg kunne gi anvisning på dristigere ting i mine bøker enn hva som stod i den tyske fortelling. De er å finne f.eks. både i Sult og Pan. Men når Jacob Sverdrup leser over igjen disse steder og forarges, så vil jeg også be ham lese f.eks. Ibsens Lille Eyolf påny. Den lille nydelige, senile råhet, champagnen som ei ble rørt, bør han virkelig nippe til. Og huske. Og bruke.

You played it with great seriousness. And it is not such an uncommon game. Do you know Ibsen's poem -- To live it to do battle with trolls in the vaults of the heart and brain. To write: that is to sit in judgement over one's self.

Do you know what we are those of us who count as pillars of society? We are society's tools, neither more nor less.

The pillars of truth and the pillars of freedom - they are the pillars of society.

I studied acting in NYU's graduate program, in which we covered everything from Ibsen and Chekov to August Wilson and David Mamet.

I don't think my looks are modern. I always imagined I'd end up doing Chekhov, Ibsen and Shakespeare all my life and never play a contemporary character.

It is easier to get the attention of the press when one says, as Ibsen4 did, that "two and two make five," than to be orthodox and say that two and two make four.

On Monday last I sat without a murmur in a stuffy theatre on a summer afternoon from three to nearly half-past 6, spellbound by Ibsen; but the price I paid for it was to find myself stricken with mortal impatience and boredom the next time I attempted to sit out the pre-Ibsenite drama for five-minutes.

And if I am further pressed to declare straightforwardly whether I mean to disparage these authorities [who criticize Ibsen], I reply, pointedly, that I do. I affirm that such criticisms are written by men who know as much of political life as I know of navigation.

For Ibsen, gusto forgives almost everything.

No one dies halfway through the last act. – Heinrich Ibsen

Most women would say they relate to 'Hedda Gabler' - there's a part of her in them. Ibsen was writing about a deep ambivalence that many women feel about domesticity. I think about myself and friends of mine - we have some of Hedda's qualities and traits.

A play is basically a long, formalistic polemic. You can write it without the poetry, and if you do, you may have a pretty good play. We know this because we see plays in translation. Not many people speak Norwegian or Danish or whatever guys like Ibsen spoke, or Russian - yet we understand Chekhov and the others.

We depend on the critics to give us a glimpse of what happened. Bernard Shaw championed Ibsen, who got the most terrible notices for his plays. Kenneth Tynan championed young writers, and as a result, the theatre has changed radically.

A lot of young girls who came to see me in 'Legally Blonde' have come to see 'Hedda,' and they hadn't heard of the play either, just like I was before I did it! If I can bring a younger generation to see an Ibsen play; that's just brilliant.

Ibsen was Norwegian by birth, but universal in spirit.