After over forty years of teaching and seeing countless productions of Ibsen’s A DOLL’S HOUSE, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to the recent KU production of the play, but I did, and it was one of the best theatrical experiences I’ve had in a very long time. Afterwards, my friends and I volunteered various sequels for what might have happened to Nora after she decides to leave her husband and children.
Here’s my version. With her friend Kristine’s urging, Nora takes up embroidery and sewing, then takes in laundry as well. But this cannot begin to pay for all her bills at the local sweetshop, so she falls back on her flirtatious ways and begins to show old men her sweaty silk stockings for a fee. Next, she moves to Paris where, before too long, she changes her name from Nora to Violetta and becomes a famous courtesan. She catches pneumonia from removing her stockings once too often in public, and is soon consumed by passion as well as consumption. The composer Verdi is one of her many admirers, and he writes an entire opera about her.