"The Immensity of the Conscious Experience of Age" Exploring the Representations of Age in Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt and Jon Fosse's Suzannah

Abstract

This dissertation explores multiple expressions of age as they are made available through close reading of two Norwegian plays, Peer Gynt and Suzannah, performance analysis of three productions of the plays (two of Peer Gynt and one of Suzannah), and a phenomenological study of volunteers associated with one of the productions of Peer Gynt. I conclude with an ethnodrama approach (a playscript) to report the findings of this study. The phrase "the immensity of the conscious experience of age" (Fuchs 2014) provides a framework for showing how these plays and their productions interrogate clichés about aging. Age theory has seldom been applied to Norwegian dramatic literature, but scholars of anglophonic drama argue that such attention can expand awareness of multiple narratives of aging on the part of theater professionals, scholars, and audience members. My hope is that this dissertation opens the door for additional age-theory-inflected scholarship of Norwegian drama, and that it encourages readers to create unique and diverse narratives about their own ages.