cultural resources in henrik ibsen's early environment - Ibsen.net

IV. Plays advertised for performance in the newspapers of Skien between
1832 and 1843, when Ibsen lived there.
Skien's first newspaper, Ugeblad for Skien og Omegn, was founded in 1830. It
ceased publication in 1839, but the following year the same editor, Peter Feilberg, started
another paper, under the name Bratsberg Amtstidende.
Upcoming performances of plays were advertised in these newspapers by
theatrical companies that visited Skien. The personnel of these companies were part of a
network of mostly Danish actors, directors, designers and musicians that criss-crossed
Norway in the first half of the nineteenth century. They could hope to be employed by
dramatic societies in Christiania, Drammen, Christianssand, Stavanger, Bergen, and
Trondheim, where they would select and perform seasons of plays in repertory.
Enterprising theatre directors in these companies would assemble touring companies in
the off-seasons, and travel to provincial towns, including those on the southeastern coast
of Norway.
The companies that visited Skien performed for from a week to six weeks, and
offered a season of between four and nineteen plays. The players were lodged in people's
homes, since there were no hotels. The companies as a rule did not have enough actors to
perform all of the roles in all of the plays, so local players took supporting roles.
Sometimes the players allowed people who would not have had the money for a ticket,
like servants and children, to attend dress rehearsals.
What follows is a chronological list of the plays advertised for performance in
Skien between 1832, when Ibsen was four years old, and 1843, when he was about to
leave for Grimstad. The plays are cited under the names of the leaders of the companies,
who normally placed the ads, and whose names appear in them.
The ads give a play's title, and usually its author. In the following list that information,
which is in quotation marks, is followed by publication information. If a play was not
published, any further information we do have is included. The translations referred to
are of plays into Danish from other languages, usually French or German. Some plays
were translated more than once. It is not always possible to determine which version was
performed on a given occasion.
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