Ibsen Encounters Tagore: A Brechtian Play

On 20 March 2026, the world celebrates the 198th birth anniversary of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Second only to Shakespeare in terms of performance, the 'Father of Modern Drama', wrote quite a few memorable plays including A Doll's House,  Ghosts, Hedda Gabler, Peer Gynt and Brand, which redefined theatre for the twentieth century. Ibsen Encounters Tagore is a token of our appreciation for Ibsen, and our very own Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, one of his early discoverers in India, whose 165th anniversary of birth will be celebrated this coming 7 May.

*Author's permission is needed for holding performances.

Two literary legends wander into a Brechtian funhouse where nothing behaves—not even the teacups. Tagore politely explains how a Nobel Prize wandered into his luggage while Ibsen steps out of a portrait frame like a man escaping museum hours. Nora and Mrinal breeze through next, professional door-exiters who rearrange entire worlds simply by leaving them. Meanwhile, a Yaksha-King negotiates with singing walls, a clerk panics alphabetically, and placards heckle everyone. The play gently insists—between jokes, chalk, and flying metaphors—that prizes are minor incidents, but the real event is the glorious, chaotic work itself.

Dramatis Personae

Each carries a gestus that shows their social stance.

Rabindranath Tagore	Nobel Laureate Bengali  poet, translator of himself; gestus: open palm at heart level, the body slightly turned toward the audience, offering and questioning at once.
Henrik Ibsen	World-famous Norwegian playwright of rigour; gestus: upright spine, hands behind back like courtroom railings, gaze that rearranges chairs.
Mrs Dutta	Landlady and kitchen stateswoman; gestus: ledger under one arm, ladle in the other; reality gets measured and served.
Nora Helmer	Door‑slammer emerita; gestus: hand on a doorknob that is not attached to any door, chin lifted at a precise angle of refusal.
Mrinal	Letter‑writer from "Streer Patra" (The Wife's letter), Tagore reportedly wrote inspired by A Doll's House; gestus: suitcase in one hand, pen in the other; the pen points outward, not downward.
The Yaksha‑King	Appears in Tagore's Raktakarabi (Red Oleanders), a sovereign whose walls hum with money; gestus: two fingers tapped against the chest as if counting; the other hand orders silence.
Anxious Clerk of the Nobel Committee	Custodian of correctness; gestus: briefcase clutched like a small, fretful continent.
The Tube (The London Underground, a character and a draught of air)	Gestus: a low hum through a tin whistle; a scarf that flutters without a body.
A Chorus / Narrator	Sometimes heard, sometimes embodied by any actor stepping forward with a placard or a bell.

 

Prologue: A Chorus Song — "This Evening Is For Thinking"

PLACARD: THIS EVENING IS FOR THINKING. ENJOYMENT IS A SIDE‑EFFECT.

The Chorus enters with a bell that refuses to ring. The bell is visible. The reason is visible.

Chorus (spoken‑sung, with a steady four‑beat):

One, see the lamps and cables; two, see the painted seam;
Three, mind the gap of fable; four, step out of the dream.

We show the ropes and pulleys, we show the battery pack;
If something looks like "magic",
we turn it round and back.

To savour what is pleasing,
first switch the thinking light.

So count with us, dear audience, count visible intent:
Incidents are trophies;
the work is the event.

A stagehand walks across with a coat rack labelled HISTORY. Dates hang from it on tags: 1879, 1891, 1912, 1913, 1914. The rack stays in view.

Chorus (closing refrain):
Mind every hinge and bracket,
be sceptical of fate;
We solder scenes in public —
consider, then debate.

 

Scene I: A Chair, A Teacup, and a Portrait That Finds Its Legs

PLACARD: A PRIZE FINDS A POET BEFORE A PLAY FINDS A COMMITTEE. Gestus: TAGORE sits with an open book; IBSEN stands inside a portrait frame that is missing its glass.

Ibsen (stepping out of the frame without apology): I am here about a Scandinavian wreath that never circled my name.

Tagore (without surprise; poets have dashboards for the unexpected): A wreath wandered into my luggage. I claim it only in translation.

Mrs Dutta appears with tea, ledger, ladle, and a look that organises time.

Mrs Dutta: Milk? Sugar? An itemised bill for destiny?

Chorus (aside to the audience): When someone says destiny, check the ledger. When someone says genius, check the kitchen.

Mrs Dutta faces the audience, holds up a chalkboard: NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE — 1913 — TAGORE. She underlines the date, then closes the board like a book.

A kettle is placed centre stage with a sign: THIS IS A KETTLE. IT WILL ALSO BE POLITICS.

 

Scene II: The Two Departures Club

PLACARD: WOMEN WHO LEAVE REARRANGE THE ROOM THEY LEAVE BEHIND.

Nora enters through a window frame that hangs from rope. She wipes her shoes on the air. Gestus: one hand lightly resting on nothing; the other making space.

Mrinal crosses with a suitcase that is visibly empty, because the audience must imagine its weight. Gestus: the pen she carries is pointed toward the horizon line chalked on the back wall.

Nora: Did someone invite fresh air?

Mrinal: I was told there would be a road not owned by a veranda.

Ibsen (measuring): You both resist furniture.

Tagore (pleased): They show us how a room can be unlearnt.

Chorus: You will notice a pattern. Each woman departs. The pattern is the argument. Keep your sympathy but lend us your analysis.

A stagehand walks through with a sign: DEPARTURE ≠ ESCAPE. DISCUSS.

Nora (to the audience): When a door closes, it also becomes a mirror. Ask what it reflects: habit, hunger, or the price of calmness?

Mrinal (to the audience): When a letter is written, a geography changes. My route is ink before it is road.

Mrs Dutta (pouring): Mind the steam; it climbs like a rumour but condenses into fact.

 

Scene III: Facts Put On Their Coats

PLACARD: THE ADMINISTRATION ARRIVES WITH PAPERS AND A NERVOUS WRIST.

Enter the Anxious Clerk of the Nobel Committee, clutching a briefcase that believes in alphabetical order.

Clerk: The files declare a confusion. Admiration continuous for Mr Ibsen; a laurel perfect for Mr Tagore. My wrists protest the paradox.

Ibsen (dry): My grandeur has been kept in prose.

Tagore (gentle): And mine was footnoted in verse.

Chorus (to audience): Committees are excellent at the past. They honour what fits inside a paragraph. Plays spill.

The Clerk opens the briefcase. Inside are small placards: PORTABILITY, TIMING, TRANSLATION. He sets them on chairs like guests.

 

Scene IV: Translation, or How to Carry a Lantern Across Water

PLACARD: A POEM IS PORTABLE; A PLAY IS ARCHITECTURE.

Tagore: I ferried myself into English. A poem is a lantern; it travels in a pocket and still lights the room.

Ibsen: My plays are buildings. Visitors must learn the exits and confront the staircases.

Mrs Dutta (topping up cups): Buildings are costly. Lanterns burn cheaper but they do set curtains thinking.

Chorus: Note the economics. The audience in 1913 had time for compact universes and headlines that could carry music. Architecture demanded rehearsal from the viewer. Many viewers refused homework.

Gestus: The actors hold transparent frames like windows. They face the audience; the frames reflect the house lights. Nothing is hidden. The music stops mid‑bar so you can measure your thought.

Tagore (aside): Translation is not a mirror; it is a ferry that must know the tide.

Ibsen (aside): Architecture is not a fortress; it is a house that challenges its residents to live awake.

PLACARD: WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO SEE HAS HAPPENED BEFORE AND WILL HAPPEN AGAIN.

Chorus (address): We interrupt our pleasant wit to remind you of structure. A woman speaks and leaves; a prize travels; a clerk apologises; a king worries about song. You will see these again. They are not fate. They are habit. Habits can be retrained.

The stagehands chalk four columns: WOMAN, PRIZE, CLERK, KING. Under each, tally marks. Each time a scene repeats a pattern, a tally is added.

 

Scene VI: The Yaksha‑King Objects to Singing

PLACARD: CAPITAL PREFERS QUIET WALLS.

The Yaksha‑King enters with a crown that looks like a ledger. Gestus: chest forward as if a vault could walk.

Yaksha‑King: Which of you invented Nandini? She keeps singing at my stonework and the accounts are beginning to dance.

Tagore: She is not an invention. She is what happens when a song finds a spine.

Ibsen (interested): He is a system with a mask. I take notes for a play I will not write.

Mrinal (to Nora): He labels chairs with revenue and expects us to be cushions.

Nora: I am allergic to furnishings.

Chorus (to audience): Observe the gestus: his hand commands silence, but his other hand counts. That is how society speaks without speaking.

The actor playing the Yaksha‑King removes the crown, shows it to the audience — paper, paint, numbers — then puts it back on, transformed into policy.

 

Scene VII: The Debate You Paid For (and We Refuse to Rush)

PLACARD: PRIZES ARE INCIDENTS; WORK IS THE EVENT.

Ibsen (leaning forward, the portrait frame now a railing): Argue it, Rabi. Why you? Why not the one who built stormy parlours?

Tagore: Timing. The world in 1913 wanted lullabies that wake you gently. Also — translation. I could ferry myself; you required captains. The sea rocks unevenly between languages.

Ibsen: So, my integrity caught bad weather.

Tagore: And your architecture requires walking. Committees are on last legs.

Mrs Dutta: Also, newspapers prefer poems that fit near advertisements.

Clerk (copying): Incidents vs events. I shall report to the alphabet.

Chorus (interrupting): This is the point where you might cheer. (Pause.) Ask what is being defended: a prize, or a way of distributing attention? The difference is the whole room.

Gestus: All characters face the audience. The room re‑orients like a compass to true north: the house lights brighten. No one is fictional now.

 

Scene VIII: The Cross‑Examination

PLACARD: QUESTIONS THAT REFUSE TO SIT DOWN.

Nora (to Ibsen): Did you write me for freedom, or to make the smoking room noisier?

Ibsen: I wrote you as a question mark large enough to sit on. If posture improved, that was a side‑effect.

Mrinal (to Tagore): Did you write my letter so I could leave, or so I could arrive?

Tagore: Both. A departure is rehearsal for an arrival with better verbs.

Mrs Dutta (pleased): At last. Furniture we can move without apology.

Chorus (to audience): If you felt triumphant, keep some doubt. If you felt doubt, keep it loud. The performance does not want you to sink back into cushions. It wants you to sit on the question mark with Nora.

Nora (softly): Freedom is a verb that requires conjugation in public.

Mrinal (firm): Letters are not private when they change the street outside.

 

Scene IX: Documentary Interlude — A Map, a Manuscript, a Breeze

PLACARD: TRANSLATION IS A FERRY; HISTORY IS THE TIDE.

A stagehand unrolls a map of London with pinholes at Hampstead, the Strand, and stations where manuscripts learn to travel. A bundle labelled GITANJALI is tethered to a Tube map with string.

The Tube (a low whistle through the wings): I merely annotated literature with a small breeze. No harm in transport.

Clerk (reading a memo): Marginalia shaped like a friend's handwriting; recovered, mislaid, recovered again. Files dislike draughts of air.

Chorus: This interlude is to prevent enchantment. Literature also rides public transport and suffers from station announcements. You are not watching destiny; you are watching logistics.

 

Scene X: Mutual Theft (Respectable)

PLACARD: INFLUENCE IS THEFT WITH RECEIPTS.

Ibsen: I built a domestic staircase and found I had laid tracks for other countries.

Tagore: I borrowed the staircase and installed it under a different sky — courtyard light, monsoon afternoon — and my characters walked up and out.

Nora: I carried the echo of a door across calendar pages.

Mrinal: I carried a letter sharper than a household expected a woman to own.

Chorus: Respectable thieves, both. They do it in broad daylight. No police are called because the city grows larger when ideas change hands.

Actors show the audience the prop labels — STAIRCASE (CARDBOARD), LETTER (CLOTH), DOOR (AIR). The label is larger than the prop.

 

Scene XI: A Brechtian Song with a Beat You Can Count

PLACARD: IF YOU HUM ALONG, HUM ABOUT STRUCTURE.

Musicians (visible) begin a simple rhythm. The Chorus leads a spoken‑song.

Chorus (spoken‑singing):

If a prize picks a poet,
Check the calendar page.
If a door lets a woman out,
Check the shape of the stage.

If a clerk mislays Scandinavia,
Check the drawer marked FEAR.
If a king dislikes singing,
Check who profits from silence here.

The song ends with a deliberate wrong note. The wrong note is the point. Laughter is permitted and then halted by a hand.

 

Scene XIII: The Kitchen Pronounces Sentence

PLACARD: COMMON SENSE IS A RADICAL TOOL.

Mrs Dutta lays out cups that have survived several governments. She places a saucer in front of every argument.

Mrs Dutta: In this room the prize is an incident; the work is the event. If you came for the crown, you may keep the receipt. If you came for the work, there is more in the pot. Help yourselves.

Clerk (scribbling, relieved): I will recommend that my superiors issue an unofficial Certificate of Kitchen Equivalence.

 

Scene XIV: Montage of Doors and Letters

PLACARD: ACTIONS REPEAT UNTIL INTERRUPTED.

In quick cuts (lights snap between tableaux):

— Nora touches an invisible knob; the sound of a hinge is a drumbeat.

— Mrinal places a letter on a table; the table retreats on wheels.

— The Yaksha‑King counts into silence; the silence bounces back a tune.

— Tagore closes his eyes to translate; the word "FERRY" projects above him.

— Ibsen draws a doorway on the floor with chalk; two actors step over it and keep walking.

Chorus: These are instructions, not miracles. You may apply them outside the theatre. That is the offer.

Chorus: If the play has worked, you can now name the pressure in a room, in a policy, in a sentence. Turn to the person next to you and find one chair that needs moving. Do not be gentle with the chair.

A stagehand hands out blank cards. On the back, in small print: Do not keep. Use.

 

Scene XVI: The Last Argument

PLACARD: THE WORLD IS CHANGING ITS MANNERS.

Ibsen (quieter): Perhaps I wanted alarm clocks. I build them well.

Tagore (equally quiet): And I — lullabies that wake you to the sound of your own thinking.

Nora (to both): Keep your clocks and lullabies. We will use them as needed. And sometimes we need neither, only the door left unlocked.

Mrinal: Or the letter uncrumpled and read aloud in a house that thought reading belonged elsewhere.

Chorus: When the temperature drops, we count breath. When the conversation rises, we count verbs.

 

Scene XVII: Afterwards, the Sky

PLACARD: THE ARGUMENT CONTINUES OUTSIDE.

Much later, Tagore and Ibsen stand by a window that is obviously a frame with no glass. They accuse the moon of plagiarism; it looks like a stage light.

Ibsen: Do you suppose prizes matter to the dead?

Tagore: Perhaps not. But debates matter to the living. They persuade tomorrow it may be braver than yesterday.

Mrs Dutta (calling from the kitchen): Bring back the cups!

Nora and Mrinal, arm in arm, exit into a street where lamplight reads like a preface. The Yaksha‑King lingers at the threshold, listening to a song only walls can hear. He steps into the risk called morning.

 

Epilogue: A Chorus Song — "Out of the Door, Into the Day"

PLACARD: WE END WITH LIGHTS UP SO YOU CAN SEE YOURSELVES.

Musicians shift to a walking tempo. The Chorus does not bow yet; it counts you in.

Chorus (spoken‑sung):

Step to the pavement, count the cracks;
Name the habit on your back.
Fold the programme, keep the note;
Carry verbs in pocket coat.

If power murmurs, whisper "why?";
If custom shouts, ask "who by?";
If silence pays to still a song,
Hum the structure, prove it wrong.

A door is chalk, a letter breath;
A prize an incident at best.
The work remains — to turn and say:
We choose the furniture of day.

Count costs, count hands, count who can stay;
Then move the chair that blocks the way.

Lights up, eyes up — make it plain:
We'll meet in questions, meet again.

They ring the bell once. It rings now. The reason is visible.

 

Ahmed Ahsanuzzaman is professor of English at Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB). He directed three adaptations of plays by Ibsen—Ganashatru (An Enemy of the People), Ninaad (A Doll's House) and Helen (Hedda Gabler) respectively in 2006, 2017 and 2025.