The theatre department delayed its debut of "Doll House" after Lucas O'Neil '12 stepped down from his role as the show's male lead for personal reasons. Andre Demers, a Portland resident and 2010 graduate of Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., will be taking his place.
The task of finding a new star fell to Roger Bechtel, the play's director and chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance.
Because of the small acting pool at Bowdoin, Bechtel found it difficult to find a student who was not too busy to assume the role at the last minute. This predicament caused him to look beyond the Bowdoin community to find a new actor.
According to cast member Ricardo Zarate '13, the theatre department considered hiring a professional, but wanted someone who looked college age. They searched for people from places as far away as Chicago.
A friend of Zarate, Demers was found within only a few days.
Demers was first informed about the play after being contacted by Zarate about a "life-changing opportunity."
While at Saint Anselm, Demers was involved with the Anselmian Abbey Players theatre group and participated in musicals, plays, one-acts, student-written productions, and Shakespearean scenes. Since graduating, Demers has turned to community theatre.
"I can't stop doing shows," he said. I'm essentially addicted to it."
Bechtel said that when a cast member leaves mid-production, others working on the play need to pick up the slack to adjust to the change in roles.
Despite the stress and complications associated with the change in casting, Bechtel is optimistic about how "Doll House" will turn out.
Demers is confident about his own part as well.
"I pride myself on being able to adapt to new circumstances well and in a short amount of time," he said.
Bechtel originally chose to adapt Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House," which premiered in Copenhagen in 1879, for its thematic relevance to the 40th anniversary of women at the College. He said that the play "changed the world in terms of making visible—across Europe and America—the situation of women in the home."
Ibsen's groundbreaking work also "ushered in realism" to the world of theater and brought about a new style of production.
Bechtel said that there are difficulties with performing such a dated play.
"It can sometimes be harder than doing Shakespeare because the social mores are so different," he said. "It can be hard to understand how to portray the characters."
To cope with this obstacle, Bechtel adapted Ibsen's original script to make the play more accessible to theatergoers. He rendered the dialogue more "conversational" and easy to follow and did so with an eye to preserving the work's original intent. He spoke positively about the actors involved in "Doll House", who were forced to overcome the difficulties of inhabiting the minds of Norwegians in 1879, and he praised the set design, which "pushes the boundaries of realism into expressionism."
In its time, "A Doll's House" was a controversial play. In Bechtel's adaptation, first year Quincy Koster will still star as Nora Helmer, a Norwegian housewife who faces blackmail after committing a crime on behalf of her husband Torvald, to be played by Demers. Both the original and Bechtel's revision of the play deal with feminist and individualist themes as the main character struggles to redefine her marital role.
"Doll House" will be performed November 3, 4 and 5 at 8 p.m. in Pickard Theater. Free tickets are available at the Student Information desk at Smith Union.