Arts Council Norway Unveils Plans For Ibsen-Inspired Theme Park

American Theatre reports that Arts Council Norway has unveilved plans for the country's newest cultural attraction, Ibsen Verden (Ibsen World), a 25-acre theme park celebrating the playwright considered by many to be the father of modern drama.

The park will be located in the city of Skein, where the author of such classics as HEDDA GABLER, A DOLL'S HOUSE and GHOSTS was born in 1828.

"Until now, visitors seeking a quintessentially 'Ibsen' experience in Norway had few options," says Gunhild Molvik, interim director of Arts Council Norway. "At last, Ibsen Verden will offer the playwright's diehard fans and casual theatregoers alike a distinctive and direct reckoning with the stark psychological naturalism that undergirds Western dramaturgy as we know it. And we'll be sure that the park's cafés will serve delicious honey cakes, Ibsen's favorite sweet."

Attractions will a haunted house, inspired by the divisive drama GHOSTS, which visitors can exit only via a lethal morphine injection, and a HEDDA GABLER shooting gallery in which participants are forced to contemplate the futility of human striving in the vicinity of a loaded weapon.

THE MASTER BUILDER Pavilion, sponsored by Nokia, will offer a free "master class" on brooding over doomed but deeply symbolic structures, with practical take-home tips like the best materials for sky castles.

Previously, Molvik points out, Henrik-hungry tourists could only hobnob with dusty scholars at the Ibsen Centre in Oslo; browse through assorted barns at the Telemark Musuem in Venstøp, the farming community where Ibsen spent his tortured adolescence; or trek to the aptly named Grimstad to contemplate the playwright's miserable years as a pharmacist's assistant in a harbor town.

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