Tenth International
Ibsen Conference
The
Ibsen Society of America and Long Island University welcome you to the
website of The Tenth International Ibsen
Conference, held under the auspices of the International Ibsen
Committee.
June 1-7, 2003
Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University
Over a hundred fifty scholars from seventeen
countries attended the 10th International Ibsen Conference, hosted by
the Ibsen Society of America and Long Island University, Brooklyn, June
1-7, 2003. The conference's sponsors were The Royal Norwegian Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, The National Ibsen Committee of Norway, The Freedom
of Speech Foundation, Oslo, the Long Island University Board of Trustees,
and the American-Scandinavian Foundation.
The chief organizers of the 10th International Ibsen Conference were Joan
Templeton, President, The Ibsen Society of America, and Errol Durbach,
President, The International Ibsen Committee. The main venue for the Conference
was the Brooklyn campus of Long Island University; a second venue was
Scandinavia House in Manhattan, the cultural center for the Nordic countries.
The conference was open-themed, with papers on multiple aspects of Ibsen's
art, including Ibsen's dramaturgy, Ibsen's affinities with and influence
on other writers, Ibsen in political and social contexts, Ibsen's reception,
Ibsen in performance. Twenty-five concurrent panels and sessions took
place over four days.
Plenary speakers for the 10th conference were Eric Bentley, seminal scholar, critic, and translator of modern drama, and Emeritus, Columbia University; Marvin Carlson, prolific, award-winning scholar of world drama and performance and holder of the Sidney E. Cohn Distinguished Professor of Theatre and Comparative Literature chair at the Graduate Center, CUNY; and Inga-Stina Ewbank, distinguished Ibsen and Shakespeare scholar and translator of Ibsen for major British Ibsen productions, and Emerita, The University of Leeds.
The conference's theatrical event was a site-specific
installation-performance based on Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea,
the creation of Ivan Talijancic, artistic director of the Wax Factory
performance group. The performance took place at the Old American Can
Factory, a multi-media performance space in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.
For a review of an award-winning workshop production of the play and an
interview with Ivan Talijancic, click here.
For the conference program, click here.
For conference papers available on line, including the three plenary speeches,
click here.
Held under the auspices of the International Ibsen Committee, the International
Ibsen Conferences take place every three or four years, with every other
conference taking place in Norway. The 10th International Ibsen Conference
was the second international Ibsen conference to take place in the United
States. The earlier venue was Yale University, in 1989.
The 11th International Ibsen Conference will be held in Oslo in 2006,
as part of the Ibsen Centennial Year in Norway. Information on this conference
will be made available in 2004 on ibsen.net, the web site for the Ibsen
Center in Oslo.
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