If Nora and Sappho existed at the same time

    I am enrolled in a drama class called Drama. In our second unit we have looked at what it means to be a doll. We have read the play A Doll’s House. We took a closer look at how gender norms are challenged in this play. In this play Nora left her husband at the end. I thought Nora stopped playing the “perfect” wife role when she decided to leave her husband, which was a very big deal in Norway at the time. This is how it challenged gender norms. Our newest project was to write a play with Nora and a historic woman picked from Judy Chicago’s dinner table. I have chosen Sappho. She was a poet from the island of Lesbbos. She is from 630 BC. I made this play to be in the future. The most challenging part of this action project was creating the script. Each character has a different perspective on gender roles. Robert is very misogynist, and Nora struggles with internal and external misogyny. Sappho doesn’t struggle with seeing women having rights, but still sexualizes them like current people do today. For example, Sappho is the kind of woman “cat call” another woman. I also picked her because she broke societal Norms in her time by being an open lesbian. Our task was to write a play and act out a scene from it. Here is a video of the second scene, and a script of the whole play.

My favorite part of this unit was reading a Doll’s house. I enjoyed hearing my classmates' opinions on what a doll really is. The hardest part of this project was creating the script because I didn’t know how to incorporate every character's opinion. I overcame this by using Sappho’s history and reading her poetry. I learned about her, and I tried my best to imagine what she would be like as a person in the future. I managed just fine. :)