The father of modern theatre, Ibsen replaced melodrama with unflinching psychological realism. His plays — A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts — tackled bourgeois hypocrisy, women's rights, and hereditary disease at a time when such subjects were unspeakable on stage. He spent 27 years in self-imposed exile and was the most widely performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare.

• Nationality: NO
• Roles: playwright