January 13, 2000
Henrik Ibsen - Hedda Gabler
- one of his most influential plays, The Dolls House, focuses on a woman who believes she loves her husband, but soon realizes that she is unloved by him and leaves; at the time, the play was controversial because of this aspect.
- most of Ibsen's plays revolved around certain issues. His plays are sometimes called "problem plays," and later perceived as character sketches or character studies.
- Hedda Gabler is, supposedly, a character of great depth and complexity.
- Hedda is a fierce individualist and proud of her family, etc.
- Her marriage at the age of 30 seemed quite percuilar; since Tesman approaches professorship, she desires materialistic wealth in order to be happy.
- The aunt was not upset upon hearing the death - runs parallel to Thea's reaction to Eidet's death, same with Tesman's reaction at the end.
- Hedda is surrounded with shallow and transparent characters...
- The allusion to the wine-leaves in Eilert's hair refers to Dionyesus, the god of wine and excess. Eilert represents what Hedda wants to do; Hedda is heemed into routine, at times on the verge of tedium.
- Hedda flirts with the judge, but does not initiate an affair.
- Hedda does not want to come under the power of the judge; she kills herself to escape it all - scandal, Tesman, and etc.
- Conventionally, a character rebels against society; but in Hedda Gabler, the rebel is a product of society - the dancing and glantary: idyllic conception of life.
- Hedda has very strong emotions, and the dramatic elements creates the atmosphere of its conclusion.
- Hedda and Eilert were once almost lovers. Her apprehension about society's expections leaves her afraid of her own sexual desires.
- Hedda and Thea are contrasting characters, foils.
- Hedda tries to destroy everything during the play. Her "beautiful" death at the end triumphs over everything that trampled her.
1) Why is the play named after her?
2) How does her vision of her father affect her life?
3) Why does Hedda play a frenzied dance melody before her death?
- Hedda was raised under the influence of her military father; that translated into her married life.
- Hedda's manipulation and control over Locuborg - drinking and killing - was her desire to do something to gain control over her life.
- Hedda's suicide could also be a custom to escape dishonour - possibly a final conformist act.
- Is there a psychological nature to Ibsen's plays.
January 27, 2000
Luigi Pirandello - Six Characters in Search of an Author
(Sei Personaggi in Cerca d'Autore)
- An early twentieth century play, part of a shift away from realism.
- Pirandello is very important to modern drama, due primarily to this shift.
- He does not present a slice of life, he concerns himself with theoretical and philosophical issues - identity and reality, etc.
- He explores the inability of language to express what is "intended", the difficulty of communicating with another.
- He explores the variability of personality - life illusion to stage illusion.
- Note the relativity of perception to time, place, mood, personality, and even the state of one's digestive process.
- the play is about embodied characters who may or may not be "immortal". In spite of the author's death, the characters in the play live on, in search of another "creator". They live on as far as their author allows them to.
- The characters enter to plead to the actors to play their story, as the actors rehearse "The Rules of the Game".
- Characters found a platform for their story. They insist their story is much more significant than the one the actors are currently undertaking.
- This puts the notion of reality in question; the theatre is inadequate in portraying reality.
- Pirandello critiques the usual conventions of the play. Much of the play is a critique of the medium of theatre.
- The producer tries to produce a more sentimental scene, despite the sorrid scene involving the father and stepdaughter.
- There is a paradoxical notion that theatre is truer than life; fixed fictional characters may be truer than the ever changing real beings, the actors.
- Characters on stage are expected to be consistent and not "out of character", i.e. father is fixed in one moment of his life, with the stepdaughter.
- The author left the little girl or boy without personalities: undeveloped character.
- The characters are frustrated in their attempts to extend their fixed identities. They do not, like human beings, have to try to unify the various aspects of their personality and identity.
- It is very difficult to portray the various aspects of human personality.
- Human beings have moods, impressions, expressions, social masks, beliefs that can't be fully integrated; the problem is that we try to unify these aspects, and Pirandello believes this integration is impossible - some often try, rather futilely, to rationalize the discrepencies that arise in life.
- As the history of the family unfolds, the outer action merges with the inner action.
- As the chaos of the final scene unfolds, reality and "make-believe" blur together. The traditional narrative is partially embedded into the unconventional?
- Henry Barrackson, in his ideas regarding the immutability of human identity, and Ibsen's strong grasp of "inner life" influence Pirandello. Ibsen portrays the inner life of characters, even though the inner thoughts of the characters are not available to the audience.
- Pirandello may be seen as an influence on Camus, Beckett, and other contemporary absurdists.
- Are there ways the character can achieve independence from the author? In literature? In "everyday"?
- Think about the play "within" the play.
- Is the boy dead? In what ways is he? In what ways is he not?
- Henri Bergson - talked about intuition; he said time is an experienced duration; emphasized the creative process over the scientific process; a forerunner of existentialism?
- Even when they found an author, they never found an author.
- Their illusion is their independence.
- The "actors" are portrayed as hams?
- The characters can't escape their roles, the son tries to escape the cyclical performative.
