Macalester English Honor Society organizes free trip to see A Doll’s House at the Guthrie

By Paul Wallace ’27

This past month Alpha Rho Theta, the Macalester chapter of the National English Honor Society, hosted a trip to see A Doll’s House at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. To arrange the excursion, Alpha Rho Theta proposed that the English and Creative Writing Department purchase tickets to the performance and make them available at no charge to the department’s majors, minors, and faculty. The department agreed, purchased ten tickets and, in a department-wide email, asked for responses from those interested in seeing the performance.

Full disclosure—I’m one of the four current officers of Alpha Rho Theta. So when only a handful of students expressed interest in seeing A Doll’s House, I worried that my fellow officers and I had misjudged the tastes of our classmates. However, after we promoted the opportunity in our English and Creative Writing classes, so many students requested tickets that the department agreed to purchase more to accommodate the increased demand.

The department also offered students multiple transportation options to ensure that everyone could attend the show. While students had the option to catch a ride with me, they could also use a rideshare service such as Uber or Lyft and receive reimbursement from the college.

I enjoyed driving myself and four others to see the show. Beforehand, we discussed our varying degrees of knowledge about the play which allowed me to obtain some pre-show context about the play’s themes and era of publication.

A Doll’s House is an 1879 play written by playwright Henrik Ibsen in which a woman named Nora struggles to hide and pay back a forged loan covering her husband Torvald’s medical care. Nora’s creditor Krogstad blackmails her while her friends Catherine and Dr. Rank sympathize with Nora but offer little help. After going to extreme lengths to save her husband’s life and reputation, his ingratitude and patronization compel Nora to leave him and set out on her own journey of self-discovery.

I wanted to see the play because I had heard of it and Ibsen before, but knew nothing about either. I didn’t know that Ibsen is the most performed playwright after Shakespeare, and that A Doll’s House was so controversial that some early productions required Ibsen to write an alternate ending in which Nora stayed with her husband.

Though Ibsen maintained that he did not intend to write a feminist play, the play’s anti-patriarchal power resonated in the Guthrie’s production. Amelia Pedlow’s Nora bridged the divide between the character’s playful fawning and authoritative presence while David Andrew Macdonald’s Torvald drew me in and sent chills down my spine. It would be remiss of me not to also commend Catherine Eaton’s empathetic yet emphatic Kristine, Andrew May’s hilarious yet human Dr. Rank, and Ricardo Chavira’s forceful Krogstad. 

I’m grateful to the English and Creative Writing Department for funding and coordinating the chance to see such important theater with my fellow English and Creative Writing majors and minors. Special thanks to Professor Matt Burgess, Jan Beebe, and the other Alpha Rho Theta officers Maria Hadjiyanis ’27, Natalie Mazey ’26, and Rabi Michael-Crushshon ’26 for their help with organizing the trip.