What was it like to play Hedda Gabler “straight”?
Fabulous. What I really wanted out of that experience was to be intimately familiar with an Ibsen play. I’ve read pretty much all of Ibsen’s plays, but they’re so intricate — actors really know plays from doing them night after night. They know all the places the seams don’t quite fit, as well as the great moments. I wanted to have that familiarity; I thought it would be very good for me as a playwright, and it was. For instance, I realized that Hedda has the same plot as an early play he wrote called The Vikings at Helgeland. The characters in Hedda Gabler are gods and goddesses and heroes manque, reborn into a drawing room, and they’re playing out the same plot. It is so weird when you realize it’s the same play. In fact, at the end of The Vikings, Hjrdis, who is this sort of Valkyrie character who also kills herself, much like Hedda, is riding off into the clouds on a winged horse. And her kid says to his father, “Look, there’s Mother! Can’t you see her, riding through the clouds o
Related Questions
- Does an anatomical and straight posture play very important role in our healthy life? Can a compressed or pinched nerve or an obstruction in the energy flow be the result of an allergy?
- to local venues. Getting ready to go on a trip and want to catch a Straight No Chaser play in a foreign city?
- What was it like to play Hedda Gabler "straight"?
