The initial global awareness and reactions towards modern life's performatives and performances lie in 19th century late modern Europe. This is also the period in which the first sprouts of modernism as an aesthetic development started to appear. Henrik Ibsen's dramatic works are a consequence of the changes observed in the period of high industrial modernity, realistically set in the background of this historical period and investigating life and relations in this age. They can also serve as a model for investigating the rise of modern drama, since Ibsen was one of the first to abandon the romanticist and melodramatic conventions of playwriting and introduced reality-based, actual settings and modernist topics in tune with the modern times and their tastes and preferences. By analyzing When We Dead Awaken, Ibsen's most modernist play, this work investigates some of the aspects of performing the modern human and the modern artist, and points to a positive solution to the respective problems by investigating play as an essential tool for balancing the Self in the high modern performing culture.