Hedda Gabler is a modern woman who wants to lead her own life, just like the men around her. After a turbulent youth and many lovers, she marries Tesman. It is an opportunistic and loveless marriage for both: Hedda gets luxury and social status, Tesman gets a trophy wife. Bored and frustrated, Hedda dreams of the world outside. When Hedda’s former lover returns, she is confronted with the emptiness of her existence.

henrik ibsen
The Norwegian founder of modern, realistic drama, Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), wrote about Hedda Gabler (1890): ‘The sad thing about this world is that so many people have little else to do except chase after happiness, without being capable of ever finding it’. By endowing ordinary, everyday life with a tragic dimension, his texts have lost little in topicality, making Nora or A Doll’s House, The Wild Duck and Hedda Gabler some of the most frequently performed plays in the world repertoire. In January 2012 Toneelgroep Amsterdam will do a repeat performance of Ibsen’s Spoken (Ghosts) directed by Thomas Ostermeier.

ivo van hove
Ivo van Hove places Hedda Gabler in a modern-day loft in a big city. The performance touches on the modern take on living, of which egocentricity and an urge for instant satisfaction are core features. Ivo van Hove: ‘In Hedda Gabler we witness a woman with a great lust for life, but Hedda takes no action to truly lead the life she hankers for so much. We know the unavoidable is about to happen. Ibsen’s conventional heroes always dream of freedom, of complete independence, but they are cheated by their dreams. There is always a reason not to make the final decision, there is always family, marriage, society or fear of a public scandal. People are but people. This is what Ibsen wants to show us.’