Jon Fosse’s Suzannah: Illuminating Henrik Ibsen’s Genius Partner

Undoubtedly, Henrik Ibsen’s legacy endures as a dramatic genius in contemporary Norwegian and global drama. He is revered as a cornerstone of a national dramatic tradition in Norway and as a pioneer of modernist drama. The Norwegian reverence for Ibsen was most clearly marked by Ibsen-året (Year of Ibsen) in 2006. The Norwegian Foreign Ministry wrote that “Ibsen-året skal vise storheten og aktualiteten i hans dikting, vise Ibsen som inspirator for kunstuttrykk i vår samtid, og mer generelt bidra til kunnskap om og interesse for Norge” (Utenriksdepartement 2005) [The year of Ibsen will show the greatness and timelessness in his work, and show Ibsen as an inspiration for artistic expression in our time, and more generally contribute to knowledge about and interest in Norway]. During this year, celebrations happened throughout Norway and also internationally, marking one hundred years since Ibsen’s death. This moment was significant for literary studies for it was an important cultural moment for Norway to have an opportunity to highlight the importance and meaning of Ibsen for contemporary Norwegian cultural identity.

One genre of literature that has become an important site for contemporary Norwegian authors to write about Ibsen and his legacy is biographical theater (a subgenre of biographical fiction). Michael Meyer’s 1964 Summer in Gossensass (Meyer 2000) and 1991 A Meeting in Rome (Meyer 2000), Lars Vik’s Lille Henrik (1993; Little Henrik), Robert Ferguson’s Dr Ibsens Gjengangere (1999; Dr. Ibsen’s Ghosts), Jon Fosse’s Suzannah (2004b), and Niels Fredrik Dahl’s Henrik og Emilie (2006; Henrik and Emilie) present fictional depictions of Ibsen and his life. Surveying these pieces, it is important to note the increasing popularity among authors to depict Ibsen and his life through biographical theater. In Biographical Theatre: Re-Presenting Real People? (2011), Ursula Canton provides a framework for understanding this genre. She argues that biographical theater challenges audiences to pose questions of the drama: Who is telling this story, and whose truth is being told? (Canton 2011, 33). According to Canton, one of the key paradigms that influences contemporary biographical theater is postmodernism. With postmodernism, the emphasis on plurality has encouraged the renegotiation and re-presentation of historical figures in ways that challenge preconceived notions:

The influence of social environments on human lives has put the idea that the self has absolute boundaries into question, an aspect that is often more visible in theatrical rather than written biographies, since the latter tend to evolve more strongly around a single, outstanding individual. Sometimes this opening of the concept of identity towards influences from the outside even leads to doubts whether a coherent core of identity exists at all.

(Canton 2011, 36)

Postmodern biographical theater challenges such boundaries and as a result, causes audiences to question the stability of truth or of a grand narrative about a historical figure. Biographical theater is a genre that provides the opportunity for authors to challenge or question the status of historical figures or the lenses through which society has viewed these figures.

The following discussion will focus on one work of biographical theater on Henrik Ibsen, Jon Fosse’s Suzannah (Fosse 2004b). The play presents a fictional representation of the relationship between Henrik Ibsen and his wife, Suzannah Thoresen Ibsen.

Suzannah premiered on January 1, 2004, on the television channel NRK 1 after the king’s annual New Year’s speech. The production starred Wenche Foss as the old Suzannah, Ane Dahl Torp as the young Suzannah, and Hildegrunn Riise as the middle-aged Suzannah. The production was directed by Berit Nesheim (“Suzannah—Ibsens kvinne”). As Fosse wrote on the title page of the published edition of Suzannah, the play consists of “Monologisk for tre skodespelarar” (2004b, 79) [Monologues for three actors]. The play is structured as a fragmented monologue presented by the three versions of Suzannah. The women exist in the same physical space, the Ibsen apartment in Oslo, but they never address each other or Henrik Ibsen.²

My reading of this drama will focus on the way Fosse’s biographical drama constructs the marriage between...