<p>Little boys don?t play with dolls, but little men certainly do in the world of director Lee Breuer?s ?Mabou Mines Dollhouse.? <br/>In the Mabou Mines acting troupe?s take on Henrik Ibsen?s play ?A Doll?s House,? women fill the role of dolls who have fallen into the vicious cycle of being domineered by the men in their lives. <br/>But what makes this version different is that the women are nearly 6 feet tall, while the men average in at 4 feet. <br/>?Mabou Mines Dollhouse? will make its West Coast premiere tomorrow night at the Freud Playhouse as part of UCLA Live?s International Theatre Festival. <br/>Mark Povinelli, who plays Torvald Helmer in the production, said Mabou Mines?s version of the play aims to shock audiences already familiar with Ibsen?s groundbreaking work. <br/>?I?ve told people that this is not your grandma?s ?Dollhouse,?? he said. <br/>And just as the take on the material is refreshing for the audience, the L.A. crowd is refreshing for the world-traveled Mabou Mines acting troupe. <br/>?There?s a taste for this kind of a production. It would be a disservice to L.A. not to have it here,? Povinelli said. <br/>The original ?A Doll?s House,? written by Ibsen in the Victorian era, was radical in its day, a feminist play that criticized the sexual politics of Victorian marriage. To see Nora, Torvald?s wife, slam the door on her oppressive marriage and leave her kids to discover herself seemed ludicrous. <br/>But today, given the United States? divorce rate of one in every two marriages, Nora?s behavior is no more shocking than having turkey on Thanksgiving. <br/>So how do the actors maintain the relevancy of the play and prevent Ibsen from feeling outdated? <br/>?It is a very non-traditional interpretation of ?Dollhouse.? It?s our true intention to bring out Ibsen?s work, but the way we do it is by radically shocking the senses,? Povinelli said. <br/>?When you think of seeing Ibsen, you want to disassociate from it somehow, and watch it as a museum piece. We try ... to throw you violently into the piece. ... You will actually be surprised.? <br/>What is non-traditional is not only the size difference between the two genders, but the suffocating effect of gender roles the dollhouse unwittingly bestows upon those who live in it. The characters live in a life-size dollhouse that accommodates, not surprisingly, the men only. <br/>?Nora physicalizes her part like an animatronic doll would,? Povinelli said. ?Nora literally has lines that say, ?My father treated me like a doll, you treat me like a doll, I treat my children like dolls.? The reality of her life is constrained to that of a doll. That?s a great angle into the heart of the play.? <br/>?A Doll?s House? debuted 127 years ago at The Royal Copenhagen Theater. By the time it hit Japan in the early 20th century, Nora?s gender-bending role had earned her, and consequently the ?immoral? women who acted like her, the derogation of committing a ?Norism.? <br/>In fact, it is Nora who is the saving grace in the patriarchal society of ?Dollhouse.? She breaks the facade of male power to show the men for what they really are: instruments of society who act out the roles that have been instilled into them their whole lives. They are not bad people, necessarily; it is society that is bad. <br/>?I think women who see this will be able to see how women are repressed in society,? said Ricardo Gil, who portrays Dr. Rank in the play. <br/>Breuer, known for his radical take on classic productions, puts his own spin on ?A Doll?s House,? transplanting its feminist beginnings into a microcosm of the harmful imbalance of power in a relationship. <br/>?I think the underlying message is that both Nora and Torvald suffer. ... They?re both set under society?s norms, so we feel not only for Nora but also for Torvald,? Gil said. ?He is as much a victim as Nora. She?s leaving without children, leaving into a world almost completely naked.? <br/>At the surface level, ?Dollhouse? may appear to be just another modernized take on Ibsen?s ?A Doll?s House.? But with patronizing jargon spilling out of the mouths of 4-foot-tall men and the absurdity of grown women trying to cram themselves into the world of the men, this production cuts deep into race, gender and physical conception issues. <br/>?I want the audience to leave and feel as if they don?t know what to say, that they?ve almost been assaulted about their preconceived notions about women and short-statured men,? Povinelli said. <br/>?They have to go home and sort their feelings out, and figure out how they fit into it ? that we are all Torvalds and Nora.?</p><br><br><a href='; target='_blank'>;