Tilt

Thoughts on the Adaptation of Hedda Gabler by Andrew Upton

Unexpected, even these days. Modern still. This way Ibsen has of tilting the story and unbalancing the dynamics between the characters. The challenge of adapting the play lies in getting this... tiltedness. In this failed heroism. This failure of Heroism. The unsettling dissatisfaction we feel as audience at the cross purposes of the character’s negotiations. At the cross purposes of the character’s reality and their skewed ideal of themselves. Because in fiction, as in memory, the tendency is to smooth over or idealise. The tendency is to make sense. Sense in a vacuum, where everything fits into place. It’s being there means it must have a place in the overall sense. The ideal sense.

In my application to the adaptation I came to realise Ibsen’s mastery of the separateness of people. That in an exchange Hedda may think something apparently similar to Judge Brack or Ejlert Lovborg - they may even seem to agree - and yet, what each has understood is profoundly different and consequently sets them on very different paths. It is from this conflict, the conflict of understanding, that the drama is born.

The dogma for writers these days is 'tell the one story', but Ibsen can tell seven and thus create this enormous, constantly shifting work. The perception of what it is possible to create within the confines of theatrical Naturalism is often limited, something more akin to chamber music. A sonata of grievances, but this is not so for Hedda Gabler. In Hedda Gabler, Ibsen has composed a symphony of misunderstanding.

Reprinted with the kind permission of Currency Press. First published in the Sydney Theatre Company program Hedda Gabler 2004

Almost Love. Stopped from Becoming

An explanatory note on the presentation:

• Full stops in the middle of sentences are broken thoughts. Stopped thoughts. Self-regulated presentations of thoughts, hopes, ideas, feelings.
• Three dots (...) suggests a drifting off (inwards or away).
• The dash is an interruption, accepted by the speaker. If a character does it to themselves there is the sense of adding on rather than correcting.
• More often than not (status and considerations of politeness not withstanding) people just continue talking over the top of each other and this is marked: [simultaneously].

Much of the play is about how we are seen. The importance of our place in society and in particular the need to conceal our more lurid urges. Names and titles and who calls who what and when are part of this. Self-regulated thoughts are part of it and Hedda’s terrible dread of Scandal is born of it.

Much of the sorrow in the play, the waste and the tragedy comes out of people stopping themselves. Getting in their own way. Tesman (who has been significantly reconceived in this version) is the triumph of the willl over inspiration. The punctuation in this adaptation, though it might appear ungrammatical or random, is an integral part of bringing the text and the sub-text alive today. Far, far greater dramatists than I (Pinter and Mamet just to skim the cream) have been and are still exploring the power of alternative punctuation in creating rhythms for performance. This adaptation was written to be performed. No doubt it will date more quickly than the source, but for now it seems to make the themes and characters more readily accessible and vital for our production at the Sydney Theatre Company.