To commemorate the centenary of the death of the great Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, the Hong Kong Federation of Drama Societies will stage his play, The Wild Duck, this month.
Although many students may not have heard of Ibsen, who lived from 1828 to 1906, he had a great influence on the history of drama.
'Ibsen is hailed as the father of modern drama,' says James Mark, the director of The Wild Duck, which is being performed in Hong Kong for the first time.
'He was the first man to write about social issues in his plots. Before him, most plays, like those of Shakespeare, mainly revolved around the lives of monarchs and the upper class, which we usually classify as romantic drama.'
Mark also explains that Ibsen's playwriting style evolved through three stages during his lifetime. He started out writing in the romantic style, before moving on to 'social realistic' dramas and then to a 'symbolic and psychological' style.
The criticism of reality found in Ibsen's groundbreaking 'social realistic' and 'symbolic and psychological' styles shocked many people at the time, especially Norway's privileged classes.
The ensuing scandal sent him into exile in Germany and Italy for many years, but history, nevertheless, remembers him as a great playwright. It is said that Ibsen is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after William Shakespeare.