We think of classic drama as an open-air event, taking place on the steps of the palace, the street, the battlefield. Modern drama, in contrast, happens in the house. Yet Henrik Ibsen, who built the modern house onstage definitively in the late 19th century (and made one of his most autobiographical heroes, Master Builder Solness, a famous architect), also sensed the truth: Modern drama's house always has something wrong about it. The counter-movement led by Ibsen's younger rival, Strindberg, saw it as a place to be dismantled, transcended, or violently exploded, like the castle out of which a giant flower... More >>>