Ibsen’s play ‘Ghosts’ is set in a single space, the home of the Alvin’s family and unfolds in 3 acts. The family has to face the consequences of their past when Mrs Alvin’s son Oswald returns and anounces he is very ill. The play is about the unveiling of old beliefs and constraints that prevent them from seing the Light, the truth. The play is set in Mrs Alving’s conservatory, a claustrophobic space which is boarded up in the first Act. During Act two, some of the boards are removed as a metaphor for the family’s secrets that are being unravelled throughout the night. In Act 3, most of the boards have been removed and thus letting the sunlight flood the room at sunrise, a metaphor for embracing the truth. My design has used light to mirror the unravelling of this family drama.

Set Design: Act 1.
The two windows are mostly boarded up from the outside. This creates a clautrophobic atmosphere. — Set Design: Act 1. The two windows are mostly boarded up from the outside. This creates a clautrophobic atmosphere.

Set Design: Act 2.
The windows are less boarded up, letting some of the light in. — Set Design: Act 2. The windows are less boarded up, letting some of the light in.

Set Design: Act 3.
The windows is less boarded, letting the light flood in at sunrise. — Set Design: Act 3. The windows is less boarded, letting the light flood in at sunrise.

Act 1 : 'How can you ask what a father wants...'

Act 1 : 'But I don't want to come with you..'

Act 1 : 'I don't know that Mrs Alving want to let me go..'

Act 1 : Regine: 'It's awfully lonely out here...'

Act 1: Pastor Manders: 'Do you think reading that sort of thing makes you feel any better, or any happier?

Act 1: Mrs Alving: 'I most certainly will try to prevent it'

Act 1: Manders: 'You never had an opportunity of knowing what a proper home is like'

Act 1: Oswald: 'I have never noticed anything particularly sham about these people's lives together'

Act 1: Pastor Manders: 'What right have people to happiness?No, we have our duty to do!'

Act 1: Mrs Alving: 'I felt the child would somehow be poisoned simply by breathing the foul air of this poluted house.'

Act 1: Pastor Manders: 'All those years together with your husband ..were nothing but a facade?'

Act 2: Mrs Alving: 'What a coward I am!'

Act 2: Mrs Alving: 'I can never get properly rid of the ghosts that haunt me.'

Act 2: Pastor Manders: 'You've been hiding the truth from me.'

Act 2: Engstrand: 'Isn't it right and proper for a man to try and raise the fallen'

Act 2: Oswald: 'It's my mind that's given way..destroyed..'

Act 2: Oswald: 'The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children'

Act 2: Oswald: 'Yes,mother,the joy of life...'

Act 2: Oswald: 'People here..believe that work is a curse..a punishment for their sins..'

Act 2: Mrs Alving: 'Now I can see for the first time. And now I can speak..'

Act 2: Mrs Alving: 'Now I can speak plainly'

Act 3: Regine: 'The orphanage is on fire!'

Act 3: Mrs Alving: 'Everything burnt. Burnt to the ground'

Act 3: Engstrand: 'I don't suppose the papers are going to let you off very lightly..'

Act 3: Engstrand: 'Don't forget my seamen's home,pastor!'

Act 3: Enstrand: 'Jacob isn't the sort to desert a worthy benefactor in his hour of need..'

Act 3: Regine: 'So my mother was that sort!'

Act 3: Mrs Alving: 'I'm so afraid it's been too much for you.'

Act 3: Mrs Alving: '...then you don't love me either..'

Act 3: Oswald: 'The disease I have inherited has it's seat here'

Act 3: Oswald: '..I've got these tablets stored up..now you'll have to give me this helping hand mother'

Act 3: Oswald: 'How can you let me suffer this unspeakable terror!'

Act 3: Oswald: 'Mother, give me the sun,the sun,the sun.'

Act 3: Mrs Alving: 'I can't bear it!..No,no,no!...'

Designs: The Man of Mode

Designs: Three Corners

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