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Who has the right to tell which stories?
Where’s the line between inspiration and exploitation?
Does any of that matter, if the story’s good?
Scandinavia, 1879.
Playwright Henrik Ibsen scandalises audiences with A Doll’s House, whose heroine Nora walks out on her family.
But to one woman, the story is all too familiar. Laura Kieler, a young writer who had turned to Ibsen for help, finds that he has stolen her harrowing circumstances as the play’s raw material. As Ibsen’s literary fame ignites, Laura’s life falls apart – she must fight to save her reputation and her relationship with her family.
In Burning Down the House, Laura steps out of Nora’s shadow and takes a theatrical flamethrower to Ibsen’s version of events.
This new production by Breach, the acclaimed company behind After the Act (Royal Court and national tour) and It’s True, It’s True, It’s True (BBC 4), has emerged from the research of leading Ibsen expert Kirsten Shepherd, Professor of English and Theatre Studies at Oxford University. Kirsten, research assistant Tzen Sam, and translator Gaye Kynoch have been uncovering and translating Laura’s articles, letters and plays to assist Breach in creating this new production