UMaine Theater Students Tackle ‘Hedda Gabler’
Contact: Sandra Hardy, 581-1966; George Manlove, 581-3756
ORONO — “A dark play with comic moments” about the tormented life of Hedda Gabler, a young Norwegian wife born a century before her time is how Sandra Hardy, the director, describes the latest student production opening Nov. 2 at Hauck Auditorium at UMaine.
“Hedda Gabler,” by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, is a story about a young woman pressured into marriage by convention and the social norms of the 1890s in Norway. She rejects many of the traditional demands of young women of the time: she does not want children; she will not be subservient to her husband; she expresses her opinions freely; and Hedda Gabler becomes caught up in a Machiavellian scheme to eliminate her husband’s chief competitor for a university professorship. The scheme does not go well.
Hardy, an associate professor of theater, says Gabler could be a modern day feminist, a business woman with what it takes to get ahead.
“She’s a very modern woman,” Hardy says. “I’m afraid she was born at the wrong time and was very lonely and very unhappy as a result. Had she been born today, she probably would be the president or the CEO or General Electric or Hewlett Packard.”
But she wasn’t born today. Hardy says the character of Hedda Gabler has been portrayed through the ages as an evil woman, primarily because of society’s values when the play was introduced.
“This is 1890. She’s well-read and very well traveled,” Hardy adds. “Life could be pretty boring if you have to stay at home and wash dishes and be submissive.”
Critics have typically portrayed Gabler as a “snake waiting to strike,” Hardy says. “Hedda would be more relevant today than she might have been when the play was originally written.”
This production of “Hedda Gabler” is of particular significance to Hardy for several reasons. Born to Scandinavian parents, Hardy reads, writes and speaks Norwegian. Looking for what she considered a more accurate interpretation of the play than the public has seen previously, Hardy personally translated the script into English and adapted the three-hour, four-act production into a two-hour, two act production. During a family reunion last summer in Norway, she enlisted a cousin to review the cultural, historical and linguistic aspects of her script. Hardy also is an expert on Ibsen, having been an Ibsen scholar who wrote her doctoral dissertation on the playwright.
Hardy praises the student actors’ portrayal of the characters in “Hedda Gabler.”
“Every one of those Ibsen characters has some particular flaw that has been captured by this ensemble,” Hardy says.
Main cast members include: Sarah Farnham of Levant as Hedda Gabler; Anthony Arnista of Burke, Va., as George Tesman; Greg Middleton of Glen Ridge, N.J., as Eilert Lovborg; Simon Ferland of Old Town as Judge Brack; Rebecca Bailey of Orono as Mrs. Elstead; Janice Duy of Caribou as Miss Tesman; and Rachel Chadbourne of Old Town as Berta.
“Hedda Gabler” runs Nov. 2-3 and Nov. 8-10 at 7:30 p.m. and Nov. 4 & Nov. 11 at 2 p.m. in Hauck Auditorium. Admission is $10; students with a MaineCard are admitted free.
For information, please call the Maine Center for the Arts Box Office at 581-1755.