A DOLL'S HOUSE
IN CHINA
玩偶之家在中国
November 30 - December 3, 2023. Rotunda Theatre, Theological Hall, Kingston, ON
In November 2023, Yu Theatre staged its first devised theatre project, A Doll’s House in China, at the Rotunda Theatre. Co-created by Tuning Huang, Yifei Zhang, Sherry Liu, Zhebo, and Daisy Jia, the work drew inspiration from Henrik Ibsen’s classic A Doll’s House.
The creative statement read:
“We seek to reveal the difficult situations and sacrifices faced by women in contemporary East Asian culture. From this starting point, through script discussions, musical creation, physical work, and staging, we created this play.” (WeChat, November 23, 2023)
The story imagined a vacuum space where women from European marriages and those from modern Chinese marriages could meet and converse. Spanning eras and geographies, the play broke the fourth wall, exploring the meaning of feminist classics today.
As the team reflected:
“Whether Ibsen’s Nora or today’s Zhang Qing, more than a century has passed, yet women’s struggles have not vanished with the tides of history. The challenges faced across cultures may appear different, but in essence they are the same—some simply hidden more subtly.” (WeChat, November 30, 2023)
This marked Yu Theatre’s first collective creation, responding to social issues and human concerns, and represented a major artistic leap for the society.
2023年11月，虞剧社在女王大学戏剧学院 Rotunda Theatre 上演了首部集体创作的编作剧场作品《玩偶之家》（又名《玩偶之家在中国》）。该剧由黄冬宁（Tuning Huang）、张翼飞、刘纪元（Sherry Liu）、哲博和贾梦茹（Daisy Jia）共同完成，灵感汲取自易卜生的经典之作《玩偶之家》。
在创作说明中，团队“试图揭示在当代东亚文化中，女性所遭遇的困难处境与所做出的牺牲。我们从这个核心开始，再到剧本的讨论、音乐创作、肢体创作和之后所有的编排等，创作了这部剧。”（2023年11月23日微信推文）由此展开的故事创造了一个特别的真空空间，让欧洲婚姻之中的女性形象和现代中国婚姻下的女性在这个假定性之下的交谈。
整部作品跨越时代与空间，打破“第四堵墙”，试图探索女性主义经典在当代的意义。正如创作团队所言：“无论是从前易卜生笔下的娜拉，还是现在的张晴，历经时代变迁一百多年过去了，女性的困境并没有随着时代的洪流消逝。两个时代和文化背景下的女性所面临的困境看似不一样，但实则是相似的，有些只是变得更加隐性了。”（2023年11月30日微信推文）
这是虞剧社首次采用共同创作的编作方式回应社会问题与人性关切，也标志着虞剧社作为校园剧社在艺术题材上的一次重要跨越。
Photo by Yifei Zhang