Does she need a bigger gun or a better author?
It’s the final act of Ibsen’s play, and Hedda’s just done herself in—again. In hopes of a rewrite, Hedda ventures out on a rollicking quest to liberate her story. She’s joined by a quirky collection of other well-loved dramatic characters equally eager to jump off their pages. Bill Rauch directs Tony Award winner Jeff Whitty’s (Avenue Q) mind-bending and riotously funny comedy that will have you questioning your attachment to archetypes, stereotypes—and your own destiny. (Strong language, mature themes)
Check out the Learn More tab for video interviews with the playwright.
Play image: Robin Goodrin Nordli as Hedda Gabler.
Watch interviews with playwright Jeff Whitty:
I always wanted to play Hedda (2:34)
What excites me about this play (2:23)
Play Synopsis
What if our world has a parallel one filled with iconic figures from literature who live on in their own special land? And what if they are doomed to repeat their fictional lives, because we real people will not let them go? So their special purgatory for celebrity characters depends on our attachment to the fictional “truth” they still have for us. This clever conceit is at the center of Jeff Whitty’s smart and funny play,
The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler.
Our heroine, one Hedda Gabler, has just committed suicide. Again. She wakes up with no memory of the act . . . just a lot of questions. The characters around her inevitably conspire to keep her in her story. Soon she catches herself feeling trapped and angry again . . . and finding a pistol.
She decides she does not want to repeat the cowardly act Henrik Ibsen designed for her but to find a new way. Her husband, Tesman, would rather she keep the status quo. He does not insist she keep shooting herself—just stay in the “home” Ibsen created for them. He even asks the famous Medea to come in and talk to his wife. Hedda, because she has no memory of her last go-round, asks her where she is.
“A world of infinite possibility coupled with heartrending limitations,” says Medea, who knows what it’s like to be stuck in this land of repeating literary tragedy. “For all of us are but fictions, Hedda, and in this place we must endure until at last we are forgot.” Just as Hedda keeps finding herself near suicide, Medea keeps finding herself ready to commit infanticide to exact revenge against her husband.
Hedda wants to change her outcome and starts out on an adventure. She gets help on her journey from the most unlikely of pop culture’s famous characters, Mammy from Gone with the Wind. Initially, Mammy’s need to serve her “missus” leads her to follow Hedda, but her indomitable spirit and survival instinct begin to surface in helpful ways for both of these travelers. She becomes much more than a stereotype, especially after a confrontation with another emblematic character, a liberated Afro-American woman of the 1970s.
Our heroes encounter other women, ranging from the Greek seer, Cassandra, to a generic TV ad lady pitching hand lotion. Tesman follows, trying to find Hedda. He points out that without her he does not “exist.”
Along the way, Mammy and Hedda stumble upon a couple of outrageous and flamboyant tour guides of sorts. Patrick and Steven are famously recognizable homosexual characters of earlier times, gay men out of ’60s plays like Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band. They are intrigued by Hedda, a favorite of theirs, and Mammy, and the women’s brave journey. The two men flirt with the idea of making a change in their repetitive existence as well. Like Mammy, they are not comfortable living as a stereotype.
Hedda learns the geography of her world: her own home, the Cul de Sac of the Tragic Women, the Dark Forest, the Verdant Glade of the Christs, the Lake, and finally the frightening Furnace (of creation). A side trip takes them to the Subdivision of the Eternal Audience.
Patrick and Steven help our female adventurers understand the landscape. With their expertise, we learn the Christs we encounter in the Verdant Glade don’t symbolize an attack on religion. Each one merely represents a favorite iconic view of the New Testament hero, from an infant to the man suffering on the cross.
Patrick and Steven reveal to all the travelers what a journey to the Furnace can mean. A dangerous place, the Furnace spits out characters who may only live a few seconds or may become icons of our literary heritage. Our guides are not hopeful about Hedda and Mammy going back into it for a rewrite.
Tesman catches up to the rest of them when the time comes to cross the Lake. The story has changed in a subtle way. These wayfarers now look and sound like the rest of us: wondering about identity, change, the simple value of life and how the audience’s empathy for and need for archetypes may outlive the audience itself. The literary conceit gives way to a very human drama.
And then they come to the Furnace. Who will be brave enough to go in?
Play image: Robin Goodrin Nordli as Hedda Gabler.