Lucas Hnath

Lucas Hnath was a super rad dude. He grew up in Orlando Florida, where his interest in

theatre began. Like us at Discovery Middle School, Lucas Hnath also attended a production of ​A

Christmas Carol​ which sparked his interest in theatre. However, he credited his interest in

theatre to the fact that he grew up so close to Disney World (which you will soon learn sparked

him to write an entire play titled ​A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the

Death of Walt Disney​). Later in his life, he was in a production of ​A Christmas Carol, ​which was

directed by David Lee (guy who ended up going to Yale School of Drama). Hnath was always

interested in theatre, but he didn’t ever see it as something he wanted to pursue as a career, so in

1998 he went to New York University to study pre-medicine.

Hnath’s pre-med track did not last him long, as he switched to NYU Tisch School of the

Arts, in which he earned a BFA in 2001 and MFA in 2002 for dramatic writing. His writing

exploded shortly after that. His play ​Red Speedo​, was presented Off-Broadway at the New York

Theatre Workshop in which it won an Obie Award. ​The Christians,​ his most famous work,

premiered Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons on August 28, 2015. Previous to that, the play

made an appearance at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville. ​The

Christians ​was nominated for Outstanding Play, and one other 2016 Drama Desk Award. In

addition, it won the 2016 Outer Critics Circle Award for an Outstanding New Off-Broadway

Play. It also won the Kesselring prize. Other works by Hnath include: ​Hillary and Clinton, A

Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney, Isaac’s Eye, ​and

Death Tax​.
 In 2012, ​Isaac’s Eye​ won Hnath the Whitfield Cook Award. 2015 brought him the

Whiting Awards, an award that has been given by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation since 1985

to ten emerging writers a year. Also in 2015, he received the prestigious Guggenheim

Fellowship, which was noted to be given to those “who have demonstrated exceptional capacity

for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts". He won the Steinberg

Playwright Award in 2017. Hnath also took the prize in Drama in 2018 for the

Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, an award established at Yale University in 2011 in efforts

to provide writers with the opportunity to focus on their work without financial concerns. Aside

from his awards, Hnath’s works have been produced at: Actors Theatre of Louisville/Humana

Festival of New Plays, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Gate Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, New York

Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Royal Court Theatre, Soho Rep, Traverse Theatre,

and Victory Gardens. He has been a member of Playwrights Horizon since 2011.

The one play written by Hnath yet to be addressed is ​A Doll’s House, Part 2, ​which

premiered on Broadway on April 1, 2017 starring Tony Award Winner and 2018 Nominee

Laurie Metcalf as Nora and 2018 Tony Nominee Condola Rashad as Emmy. In addition, the play

was being commissioned by South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, California. ​A Doll’s House,

Part 2, ​is a sequel to the famous Henrik Ibsen's ​A Doll’s House.​ However, though the plot in

Part 2​ picks up 15 years after its counterpart ended, the story reads the same whether you know

the prequel or not. The first scene of ​Part 2 ​is essentially just there to get all the information

necessary from the first half of the story into the audience's minds. ​A Doll’s House, Part 2 d​ oes

not have the average exposition that many other plays and musicals have.
 A Doll’s House, Part 2 ​is a dramatic comedy filled with humor that leaves you rolling on

the floor and moments of tension the push you to the edge of your seat. I know this from

experience, because I saw the Tony-nominated play on Broadway last July. Different from the

prequel, this play only has four characters: Nora Helmer, Torvald Helmer, Anne Marie (the

maid) and Emmy (one of three of Nora and Torvald’s children). Nora is fierce, fiery, and

feminist to a “T”. Torvald, the man Nora believes to be her ex-husband, is revealed at the

beginning of the show to have never filed the divorce papers at all. Anne Marie raised Nora’s

children with Torvald the minute Nora left him 15 years prior to the beginning of the play.

Emmy is becomes involved in the story when Nora realizes she is the only person who can

convince Torvald to file the divorce.

The story is essentially about Nora going back to the home she left 15 years prior to get

the papers from the divorce she thought had been filed. Since she left the house, she had written

several narratives about her life using a pseudonym so nobody from her past life would know it

was her writing. However, previous to that she spends time alone in a house by herself for long

enough that the only voice she hears in her mind is her own. She wants nothing more than to live

her own life, without anyone holding her back. She writes a book about how she believes

marriage is what ruins women’s lives. When she is made aware that she is actually legally still

married, she worries that if the public finds out she will lose all of her credibility as an author. In

addition, she had been living those 15 years away from home as a single woman, and could be

put in jail or prosecuted for her crimes. Torvald, however, does not want the divorce because the

entire town presumed Nora to be dead, and nobody from the family said otherwise. In the end,
Torvald files the divorce papers just to have Nora rip them up when she realizes she no longer

needs them and is ready to face the consequences.

Something different from my perspective is that I have experienced this play in the flesh.

I walked into the John Golden Theatre having not read ​A Doll’s House​, and didn’t know

anything about ​A Doll’s House, Part 2 ​other than it starred the iconic Laurie Metcalf​. I was later

surprised in the best way possible when Condola Rashad walked onstage as Emmy. As an actor

of color, I was amazed to see her in a role that years ago would have been only played by white

women. It is amazing to me that broadway is getting to the point where if an actor is the best

actor for the role, they are going to get the job. Too often are actors losing roles to type-casting,

and I am so glad I got to experience Condola defying that idea. She was charming, inquisitive,

and truly mesmerizing. Something about the show that surprised me was in the end when Nora

ripped up the divorce papers that Torvald had taken such extreme measures to get for her. Those

papers were the thing she entered the stage wanting, and when she finally got them, I was

confused to see her throw them away. However, Hnath made that choice very carefully to show

that by the time Nora is getting ready to leave the house, she has changed. She doesn’t need the

divorce. She is ready to accept whatever happens to her in the real world, without anyone else

having to fix her problems for her.

This is truly an excellent play written for these four characters in a way that makes us

empathize with every one of them. We see the hardships that Emmy has gone through growing

up without her mother. We see Anne Marie, a women who had experienced working for the

bourgeoisie in the heat of the mid-1800s and just wanted wanted to live her life in peace. We saw

Torvald, a man who after being left by his wife, reads a book about every horrible act he had
done to make her life what she would classify as a living hell. And we see Nora, a woman who

just wants to live her own life. What is fascinating about this work by Hnath’s is that it is truly

one to spark debates. It plays to the extremes. Nora doesn’t just want to be independent, she

wants nothing to do with marriage - ever. Though it is written to take place in 1894, the feminist

themes are exactly what society needed a year ago when the play opened on Broadway.
http://newdramatists.org/lucas-hnath

https://www.playwrightshorizons.org/shows/trailers/lucas-hnath-artist-interview/

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2017/04/lucas-hnath-the-playwright-a-dolls-house

https://www.theatermania.com/broadway/reviews/a-dolls-house-part-2_82037.html