Stanislavski's When One Door Closes

“To perform expressionistic drama, approach your interpretation of character with the techniques of Stanislavski in order to provide a human base.” (Crawford, Hurst and Lugering. Pg. 238) Realism is defined as “the realistic movement in theatre” triggered by Stanislavski’s system of realistic acting through the use of “method acting”. The play “When One Door Closes” is a mixed interpretation of the three great heroines who created twentieth century drama: Miss Julie, Hedda Gabler and Nora Helmer. Despite the fact that the play was based around three main characters from realist plays, the performance was not realism at all. Although the performance was an interpretation of the original characters, the actors used a wide range of Stanislavski’s

The way the woman were introduced and known to the audience was through the use of a narrator and colour coding. Nora was introduced as “perfect, pretty, proper and pink” with a sound track of birds and dialogue, “little lark”, from the original play. Hedda was introduced through song and is thrown onto the floor by one of the interchanging male leads. The narrators mentioned the fact that the other characters were more upset about the stain left on the carpet after Hedda commits suicide, which then lead to the woman drawing an outline of her body on the floor, making it look like a crime scene. Miss Julie was introduced a little differently. She came in on a male and started her acrobatic performance, dressed in red. All female characters, throughout their introductions, had a moment where they were shown to be stuck in the ground, trying to escape, which connotes to the imprisoned relationship they have with the men in their life. The three actresses playing Nora, Hedda and Julie expressed through their performance that there were constant shifts of dominance in their relationships, through the use of movement and tempo of the music. In the beginning, the woman were being cornered and belittled by the male leads, which changes quickly, where the woman were standing over the males, shifting the dominance in the