A Doll’s House

At the heart of A Doll’s House lies Nora Helmer. Over the course of the show, we follow her as she begins to deconstruct everything about her life: the roles she plays, the relationships she shares with others, the decisions she makes. She questions: who am I? why am I? and, does life have to be like this? Throughout the show, Nora explores these topics in largely external ways. We watch as she interacts with her husband, children, and friends, her dialogue hinting at the torrent underneath. Only when she’s alone does she allow herself to panic at the thought that her friends and family might discover the anxious, vulnerable woman beneath the Stepford Wife façade – and why, exactly, she’s so anxious.

As the sound designer for A Doll’s House, Isaac Jo wanted to explore Nora’s internal struggle through expressionistic music and soundscapes. Director Jasmine Roth and Isaac envisioned an evolving stream of sound that grows each time Nora is alone with her anxieties, straining more and more against her insistence that everything is okay, everything is fine until the dam bursts – Nora EXPLODES – forcing her to finally confront the fact that she is deeply unhappy. To trace this journey, Isaac composed original motifs using orchestral instrument libraries, built on these motifs over the course of the show, and used granular synthesis, envelope generators, and randomizers (among other things) to tear everything apart. Once Nora finally accepts how unhappy she is, she decides she can do nothing but rebuild herself, and the music reassembles to match.

This project was made possible in part with support from the Frank-Ratchye Further Fund Grant #2023-029.

Creative Team
Jasmine Roth – Director
Eva Hu – Lighting Designer
Ningning Yang – Scenic Designer
Olivia Curry – Costume Designer
Jin Oh – Media Designer
Val Nayak – Dramaturg
Allie Blaylock – Stage Manager
Catherine Moore – Intimacy Coordinator

Cast
Alex Sheffield – Nora Helmer
Lukas Jarvi – Torvald Helmer
Sophia Macy – Kristine Linde
Joshua Elijah Lewis – Doctor Rank
Travis Roy Rogers – Nils Krogstad

Production Team
Melissa Lubina – Production Manager
David Martin Sunderland – Project Manager
Sophie Rodriguez – Job Lead
Todd R. Kulik – Props Manager
Kristin Ward – Props Coordinator
Beth Zamborsky – Scenic Charge Artist
Janelle Mosovsky – Lead Scenic Artist
Noelle Cremer – Draper
Brandon Eridan – First Hand
Eva Oney – Lighting Manager
Logan Donahue – Lighting Programmer
Pan-Pan Gou – Sound Engineer
Lilian Kim – Media Engineer
Assistants
Daniel Sepehr Bamdad – Assistant Director
Selina Wang – Assistant Production Manager
Alexander Farrell – Assistant Production Manager
Julia He – Assistant Stage Manager
Jesús E. Feliciano – Assistant Dramaturg
Viscaya Wilson – Assistant Scenic Designer
Pei Liu – Assistant Costume Designer
Reiley Torfun – Assistant Media Designer
Abby Bi – Assistant Media Engineer