Episode Details

I wrote the song Storybook Undone almost exactly two years ago after signing a copy of the Best Women’s Stage Monologues of 2022, an anthology in which I’m featured.

Here in this book you will find 70 very diverse monologues written for women. These pieces present great acting challenges, and actors will have the pleasure of sinking their teeth into this sublime material while continuing to perfect their craft in their online or in-person workshops. The monologues all come from plays. Read these pieces, act these pieces. They will seem familiar to you as you hold the mirror up to nature and realize that art is indeed life.

Smith and Kraus Website

I’ve been thinking about Storybook Undone a lot lately, after writing a new song that I love, which in many ways feels like the sister of this song. I’m really excited to release it soon.

These are the last few lines of Storybook Undone — the final chorus.

And now that I’m free / I can learn to just be me

Not who I thought I was / Who you thought you loved

She’s not here no more / She walked through the door

Oh, watch me run / Watch me tumble on

Storybook Undone was largely inspired by A Doll’s House Part 2, a sequel inspired by Henry Ibsen’s acclaimed A Doll’s House.

Before we talk about A Doll’s House Part 2, we obviously have to talk about Ibsen’s original masterpiece.

For the record, you could see A Doll’s House Part 2 with no context, but what fun is that?!

Housewife and mother Nora Helmer lives a delicately constructed — and seemingly perfect — life focused on keeping up appearances and meeting expectations. When a long-held secret comes to light on Christmas Eve, the foundation of Nora’s world begins to crumble. The blackmail and lingering resentments that emerge force her to come to terms with the fragile facade of her doll-like existence. Torn between playing the part that’s been built for her or leaving behind everything she’s ever known, Nora is faced with an impossible choice.

-from The Guthrie Theater website.

They’re about to do an adaptation by Amy Herzog, whom I love! She wrote the play 4000 Miles, which I did a monologue from for years. So if you are in Minnesota. Pleaseeeeee see this for me!

The choice that Nora makes at the end of the play is shocking and largely unprecedented for a woman in the 19th century.

I’m not going to completely spoil the ending too much because I would give anything to watch and read this play again for the first time.

I will say that the door that protagonist Nora walks through is famously considered the door slam heard around the world; the slam that closed the door on the way things were and ushered drama into the new, modern world.

A Doll’s House is easily one of my favorite plays. I first saw it at a theater company* I worked with in high school. I loved it so much that I saw it 2 or 3 times. I also ended up reading it in high school, and maybe again in college, and then saw the Broadway production with Jessica Chastain in 2023. In that production, Jessica Chastain as Nora walked out the door and straight into the streets of New York City, which was truly electrifying. (Some have criticized the staging because the quintessential ‘slam’ is missing - but I loved it.)

** I was so excited to be working off-off Broadway that I didn’t even think about the fact that I was paying dues and not actuall