A doll's House, casting decisions for Nora and Kristine Lynde

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Breifly outline and justify your casting decisions                                 

for Nora and Kristine Lynde.                                                

Then explain how you would direct your actors

in Act one of the play in order to highlight the

 contrast between the two.

Both Nora and Kristine Lynde are extremely interesting characters however both have completely different personalities and appearances. Through these differing personalities, Nora and Kristine can be contrasted. Through my direction these parallels can be highlighted. Nora, for example, has a zest for life whereas Kristine quiet and polite. I feel these characters can successfully go together with each other because their differences work well together and complement each other.  

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        For the character of Nora I would want an actress to consist of these qualities: The actress would need to take controll of her own growth, as Nora's character rapidly grows throughout act 3. The change of an irresponsible, silly 'child' of Act 1 to the unafected, stable character seated at the table with Helmer in Act 3 seemed unimaginable. The energy of the play lies in her self-discovery. She is a very affectionate person showing this by kissing Helmer affectionately and playing with her children (as clothing in ninteenth-century is extremely extravigant and restricting, this would suggest that Nora ...

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The Quality of Writing can be dubious here. Though no explicit errors with regard punctuation or use of grammar are made, the candidate appears unsure of the correct spelling for Mrs. Linde, or Kristine. Many times they spell the name differently - "Khristine", "Kristine", "Mrs. Lynde", "Mrs. Lynd" and "Mrs. Linde". This looks highly unprofessional and very careless actually, the candidate cannot afford to continuously spell a character's name wrong when they have studied the text they are writing about for months. Be sure to address your character appropriately and accurately. In this case the correct spelling is "Mrs. Linde".

The Level of Analysis here is fair, but is far better augmented when concerning Nora than when concerning Mrs. Linde. The candidate makes many an insightful and realistic observation about the requirements of the actress you should play Nora, though oftentimes these suggestion feel like too much of an analysis and not enough of a description of the actress they need. For instance - and this also goes for their description of Mrs. Linde - how old will the actresses be? (this is very important as Mrs. Linde is evidently older, far more learned and more traditionalist than Nora) What about their hair colour? What will their costumes be like? How should they walk? How tall are they both? (Mrs. Linde, being old, might be shorter than Nora; walk slowly; be hunched over even from all her years labouring; she may have a weather-beaten face and whittled grey hair, for example. She would be in her late fifties/early sixties). Alongside the relatively poor description is a good understanding of the times in which the play was written (discussing the restrictive issues of Victorian clothing), and so the candidate succeeds here in appreciating context.

This answer starts off with a pretty wayward introduction that seems to be there for the sake of being there, whilst recycling the same first sentence over and over again. The candidate really should be looking to include some background information about the play, it's significance to the world of Theatre when it débuted, and how the candidate intends to get the audience to react to their characters. After doing this, the candidate can then begin to consider how they are going to go about eliciting that audience response in the main body of the essay. The structure otherwise is fairly good, with two distinct paragraphs - one for Nora and one for Mrs. Linde. Although I would argue that a sufficient conclusion is needed. It doesn't need to be greatly informative, but it does need to be there, so to tie up the end of the essay and signal it's completion. As it stands it feels slightly detached at the moment, and the candidate may be marked down on their essay writing ability without one.