"She is to be regarded rather as her father's daughter than as her husband's wife." - Ibsen on his decision to name his play Hedda Gabler instead of Hedda Tesman

Newlyweds George Tesman and Hedda Gabler have just returned from a six-month honeymoon to a life with the appearance of a fairy tale: a large attractive house, a prosperous career, prospects for a family and social calls from an eclectic groups of friends. But when a childhood girlfriend announces that she has just left her husband and an ex-lover appears on the scene, a fire within Hedda begins to burn out of control from the fuel of longing, entrapment and scandal. This is no Cinderella and Prince Charming is far from reach.

When Hedda Gabler was written in the nineteenth century, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen had already lived through a series of successes with such works as A Doll's House, Ghosts and An Enemy of the People. Little did he know that his works would be so enduring. Decades after his death, Ibsen's work still has universal appeal, most recently attracting actress Annette Bening and playwright Jon Robin Baitz (whose new adaptation of Hedda Gabler will be produced at the Hippodrome). Ibsen was an "actress' playwright" who penned challenging, psychological roles for women in much the same way Shakespeare did for men. He explored forms outside the traditional plots of realism creating instead those which converged on psychological and existential problems. By the time Hedda Gabler emerged, Henrik Ibsen had gained his place among the greatest writers in world literature and his work has continued to entertain and challenge audiences worldwide.

Never in its 27-year history has the Hippodrome produced a work by this world-renowned playwright. The appeal to Hedda Gabler is its timeless themes and issues. Director Lauren Caldwell believes that certain issues from the 1890s still exist -- Issues that we thought would have gone away by now. To see just how relevant the themes and issues of Hedda Gabler are to the audience of the twenty-first century, check out the Hippodrome's production February 25 - March 19, 2000.
 
 

George Tesman - a research scholar

Hedda Gabler - his wife

Miss Julia Tesman - his aunt

Thea Elvsted - Hedda's childhood schoolmate

Judge Brack - family friend to George and Hedda

Eilert Lovborg - another researcher and Hedda's ex-love interest

Berta - the housekeeper
 
 

1828 Henrik Johan Ibsen Is born on March 20 in Skien, Norway

1844 Apprenticed to a chemist in Grimstad

1850 His first work, Caitline, published. The Warrior's Barrow, his first one-act play has its premiere performance in Christiania (Oslo)

1852 Hired as a stage director at The Norwegian Theatre in Bergen

1853-1856 Premieres of several works throughout Norway.

1857 Hired as artistic director of the Christiania Norwegian Theatre

1858 Married Suzannah Thoresen

1859 Birth of son, Sigurd. Begins writing poems.

1862 Christiania Norwegian Theatre goes bankrupt. Receives a grant to visit western Norway and collect folklore. Becomes a consultant at Christiania Theatre

1864 Premiere performance of The Pretenders. Travels to Italy, living in Rome for four years.

1866 Brand published, a major success. Awarded a salary by the Norwegian government.

1867 Writes Peer Gynt

1869 The League of Youth is written and performed for the first time. Participated in a Nordic orthography meeting.

1871 Publishes a collection of poems (Poems) for the first and last time

1875 Moves to Munich where he lives for three years

1877 The start of a very prolific string of playwriting resulting in plays nearly every two years until his death:

Pillars of Society (1877)

A Doll's House (1879)

Ghosts (1881)

An Enemy of the People (1882)

The Wild Duck (1884)

Rosmersholm (1886)

Hedda Gabler (1890)

The Master Builder (1891)

Little Eyolf (1894)

John Gabriel Borkmann (1896)

When We Dead Awaken (1899)

1878 Moves back to Rome

1883 Spends the summer in the Tyrol (the setting for Hedda's and George's honeymoon travels)

1885 Moves to Munich

1891 Moves back to Norway.

1898 Celebrates his 70th birthday

1900 Suffers his first stroke

1906 Dies on May 23

Below is just a small sampling of women who have challenged convention and landmark events in women's history just before and after Hedda Gabler was written (and made its own mark).

1792 Vindication of the Rights of Women by English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft (mother of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley), 33, is a blunt attack on conventions.

1824 Scottish social reformer Frances "Fanny" Wright, 29, champions women's rights and free public schools in America.

1851 U.S. social reformer Amelia Jenks Bloomer, 33, urges reform of women's clothing in her magazine The Lily. She will be ridiculed for wearing full-cut trousers ("bloomers") under a short skirt in public.

1865 Henrietta (Hetty) Howland Robinson Green inherits money from her father and a maternal aunt and keeps her finances separate from her husband. She dies a millionaire in 1916.

1868 Revolution, a newspaper founded by Susan Brownell Anthony, 49, has as its motto: "Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less."

1879 Congress gives women the right to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court. Nora, the lead character in Ibsen's A Doll's House creates a stir when, at the play's end, she leaves her husband and family -- an act which one reviewer called "the door slam heard 'round the world."

1884 A petition to guard married women's property rights is promoted by -- Henrik Ibsen.

1903 Researcher and Sorbonne student Marie Curie started measuring uraniums' potency and soon discovered that thorium behaved much like uranium. She coined the term "radioactivity" for the properties both elements shared. In 1903 Marie and husband Pierre won the Noble Prize in physics based on their work with radiation.

1911 Harriet Quimby, a magazine writer, became the first U.S. woman and only the second in the world to become a licensed pilot. The following year, she became the first woman to fly across the English Channel. In 1937, another female pilot, Amelia Earhart left her own mark in aviation history with her journey to fly around the equator.

1916 Norwegian women gain the right to vote. England follows in 1918 and America in 1920

1918 Emmeline Pankhurst favorably influences masculine opinion by persuading women to do war work.

1922 Legendary markswoman Annie Oakley breaks the world's record for women's trapshooting, smashing 98 out of 100 clay pigeons at a North Carolina gun club.

1928 Anthropologist Margaret Mead publishes Coming of Age in Samoa, a groundbreaking study of adolescent girls in the American Samoan village of Ta'u. She discovered that these girls lived in a happy non-competitive society due to the absence of Western influences. Mead left a mark in the field of anthropology which had up to that point predominantly consisted of males studying males.

1929 Author Virginia Woolf writes A Room of One's Own which is based on the premise that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." It also offers a feminist answer to the question, "Why have so few women been great artists?"

1932 Mildred "Babe" Didrikson was widely considered to be the greatest female athlete of all time - dominating the 1932 National Amateur Athletic Union track and filed championships and the Olympic trials. By 1950 she excelled at golf, basketball, swimming and baseball (even striking out Joe DiMaggio in an exhibition game)

1963 The Feminine Mystique by U/S. feminist Betty Goldstein Friedan, 42, argues that women as a class suffer various forms of discrimination but are victimized especially by a system of delusions and false values that encourages them to find personal fulfillment through their husbands and children.

1. One review of the play stated: "She was the original angry chic with a gun. Before Jackie Brown, before La Femme Nikita, even before Bonnie Parker, there was Hedda Gabler." Do you agree? What impact did these women have on society? What other women (real and fictional) may be seen as "Hedda Gablers"? Why?

2. Author James Joyce said, "Ibsen's knowledge of humanity is nowhere more obvious than in his portrayal of women." Using Hedda Gabler and one other work by Ibsen, prove Joyce's point with specific examples.

3. Write a review of the Hippodrome State Theatre's production of Hedda Gabler.

4. Interview Judge Brack ,George Tesman and at least one other character from the play upon the death of Hedda. The goal of the interview is to gain their personal insight into her actions. Use these interviews in an obituary or features story in a newspaper of the 1890s and a modern day newspaper. Be aware of the differences of reporting an item like this in the 1890s versus today.

5. Direct a scene from Hedda Gabler.

6. When Hedda Gabler was first produced, some audiences were shocked. What do you think was the cause of their shock? What in the play shocks a modern audience? What themes and issues do you find universal?

7. Why doesn't Hedda leave George? Answer this question by comparing the difference in time (in other words answer it as though it were 1890 and then answer it as though it were another time period like 1950 or 2000).

8. Based on what you know about Hedda Gabler, write a brief timeline of her life. Do your best to create her history before the play begins.

Or...write a timeline on George Tesman's life.

9. Look up at least two other productions of Hedda Gabler and write a comparison of the set design styles. Go a step further and include

other comparisons such as costume, sound, light, and acting styles.

10. Scandal is one theme in Hedda Gabler. List examples of scandal in the play. What is scandalous by today's standards?