Hedda Gabler

2013–14 SEASON

FEBRUARY 1–7

creating lasting impressions

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FEBRUARY 1—7, 2014

YALE SCHOOL OF DRAMA James Bundy, Dean Victoria Nolan, Deputy Dean Joan Channick, Associate Dean

PRESENTS

By HENRIK IBSEN Translated by PAUL WALSH Directed by KATHERINE McGERR CREATIVE TEAM Scenic Designer

ADRIAN MARTINEZ FRAUSTO

Costume Designer

SOULE GOLDEN

Lighting Designer

CAITLIN SMITH RAPOPORT

Composer and Sound Designer Production Dramaturg Stage Manager

STEVEN BRUSH JENNIFER SCHMIDT SHANNON L. GAUGHF

CAST Eilert Lövborg

MAMOUDOU ATHIE

Hedda Gabler

ASHTON HEYL

Thea Elvsted

TIFFANY MACK

Juliane Tesman

ELIA MONTE-BROWN

Jørgen Tesman

DANIEL REECE

Berte Commissioner Brack

ARIANA VENTURI MITCHELL WINTER

THERE WILL BE ONE FIFTEEN-MINUTE INTERMISSION. Permission granted by Abrams Artists Agency, 275 Seventh Ave., 26th Floor, New York, NY 10001. All inquiries concerning rights to the Play shall be addressed to the above or to literary@abramsartny.com.

A

fter finishing the manuscript for Hedda Gabler in November of 1890, Henrik Ibsen wrote that it was “good to have done with it,” admitting that, “living every moment of my life with these fictitious characters was beginning to make me more than a little nervous.” More than 120 years after Ibsen unleashed his characters on the world, they continue to make audiences, critics, and readers “more than a little nervous,” especially his enigmatic protagonist, Hedda. She has variously been called a malignant fury, fiendish bully, spoiled child, and great lady.

Hedda is enigmatic in part because, as Ibsen explains, it was not his “intention to deal in this play with so-called problems.” Thus, it is harder to align Hedda with the specific social problems of her time, as critics had done with characters in Ibsen’s earlier Naturalistic dramas. Instead, Ibsen writes, he wanted to “depict human beings, human emotions, and human destinies, upon a groundwork of certain of the social conditions and principles of the present day.” As the plural nouns in Ibsen’s letter indicate, Hedda’s destiny is connected to the complex web of destinies surrounding her, and any attempt to understand Hedda Gabler involves grappling not only with the elusive central figure but also with the carefully crafted network of characters around her.

—JENNIFER SCHMIDT, PRODUCTION DRAMATURG

“

How should men understand Hedda on the stage when they didn’t understand her in the persons of their wives, their daughters, their women friends? …

Hedda was not all of us, but she was a good many of us.

”

—ELIZABETH ROBINS, PLAYED HEDDA IN 1891

“

Hedda isn’t simply a capricious, bad-hearted, interfering femme fatale. In her own mind she does everything for the best, but she’s committed to a very old-fashioned set of principles and totally out of her depth with the other characters.

She is not the motor of the play.

They are.

”

—GLENDA JACKSON, PLAYED HEDDA IN 1975

“

Paralyzed by her own perfectionism, tied down by the lack of alternatives, devoured by the unquestioning greedy lives around her and inside her, where is she to direct that nervous animal energy of hers? … She must know everything and commit herself to nothing.

”

—JANET SUZMAN, PLAYED HEDDA IN 1975 AND 1977

All the She is various I’ve often seen “characters “ “ seem Hedda played and sinuous to me to be morally deranged.

All the heroines are dissatisfied spinsters who look on marriage as a monopoly, or dissatisfied married women, in a chronic state of rebellion … As for the men, they are all rascals or imbeciles.

”

—E.F.S. PIGGOTT, TESTIMONY TO THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON CENSORSHIP, LONDON, 1892

“

[Hedda is a] monster created by the author in the form of a woman who has no counterpart in the real world.

”

—LITERARY CRITIC FOR THE OSLO MORGENBLADET, 1891

and graceful, complicated and natural; she suffers, she struggles, she is human, and by that fact exposed to a dozen interpretations.

—HENRY JAMES, 1891

”

Of all Ibsen’s “works, Hedda

Gabler is the most detached, the most objective—a character study pure and simple. …He simply paints her fulllength portrait with scientific impassivity. But what a portrait!

—WILLIAM ARCHER, 1906

”

as a rebel, a powerhouse, a dominatrix, even; but I see her as having a fatal combination of creative brilliance and deep fear: the more she sees and manipulates in the world around her, the more afraid she is to act on her own behalf. She’s a paradox in that way.

”

—KATHERINE McGERR, DIRECTOR

CAST MAMOUDOU ATHIE (EILERT LÖVBORG) is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where his credits include The Visit, Iphigenia Among the Stars, and Fox Play. Other credits include Hamlet (Yale Repertory Theatre); Reality Sandwiches (Dixon Place); The Wedding Reception (Columbia Stages); and various workshops and readings with Youngblood, La MaMa E.T.C., NYU, and Freedom Train Productions. He is a co-founder of D.I.Y. Shakespeare, where his credits include As You Like It with Big Babies. Regional credits include The Zoo Story, Tripolitania, Becoming Sylvia (Williamstown Theatre Festival); and The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare Theatre Company). At Yale Cabaret he has been seen in The Yiddish King Lear, Funnyhouse of a Negro, The Fatal Eggs, and Tartuffe. Mamoudou previously studied at the William Esper Studio.

ASHTON HEYL (HEDDA GABLER) is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where her credits include I’m Sorry I Brought Up God, Lottie in the Late Afternoon, Sunday in the Park with George, Iphigenia Among the Stars, and Fen. Other credits include A Streetcar Named Desire, The Winter’s Tale (understudy, Yale Repertory Theatre); Radio Hour, Chamber Music (Yale Cabaret); Tartuffe (Yale Summer Cabaret); The Cat and the Canary (Berkshire Theatre Festival); Belles (Theatre Row); After the Revolution, Golden Gate, The Egg-Layers with the Fellowship Company (Williamstown Theatre Festival); 1776, Twelfth Night (Texas Shakespeare Festival); and A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the LIVE! Company (Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey). BFA: Carnegie Mellon. Ashton is a member of Old Sound Room and a recipient of the Jerome L. Greene Scholarship.

TIFFANY MACK (THEA ELVSTED) is a second-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where she has appeared in Wintertime. Other credits include All of What You Love and None of What You Hate (Yale Cabaret) and The Accident (Williamstown Theatre Festival). She received her BFA in theatre from the University of Oklahoma.

ELIA MONTE-BROWN (JULIANE TESMAN) is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where she previously was seen in The Visit, Twelfth Night or What You Will, Fox Play, Mexico Play (A Farmer’s Almanac), King Richard 2, and Vieux Carré. Her other credits include The Pits, Loving v. Virginia (Williamstown Theatre Festival); Everything Is Ours (Colt Coeur); Flashback (Ensemble Studio Theatre); Sonnets for an Old Century (Bank Street Theater); This., Funnyhouse of a Negro (Yale Cabaret); As You Like It (D.I.Y. Shakespeare); Three Sisters (understudy, Yale Repertory Theatre); as well as a series of selfcomposed performances at Exit Art. Film and television credits include Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Once Upon a Time in Brooklyn. Elia is a native New Yorker and is a co-founder of Old Sound Room.

Prior to Yale, Elia worked as an actor and a New York City public school teacher.

Her first written work, The Defendant, premiered at Yale Cabaret this winter.

DANIEL REECE (JØRGEN TESMAN) is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where his credits include Romeo and Juliet, Sunday in the Park with George, Martyna Majok’s Petty Harbour, and Ryan Campbell’s Dead Ends. Yale Cabaret credits include Bound to Burn, The Most Beautiful Thing in the World, The Ugly One, The Fatal Eggs adapted by Dustin Wills and Ilya Khodosh, and reWilding by Martyna Majok. Other credits include Pygmalion, The Bachelors, Important Hats of the Twentieth Century (Williamstown Theatre Festival); Hair, The Skin of Our Teeth, A Man for All Seasons, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and The Arabian Nights (Connecticut Repertory Theatre). Daniel is a cofounder of Old Sound Room, a New York-based theatre company of twelve Yale School of Drama students and alumni. The company’s credits include Old Sound Room Lear and Machine Makes Man, created by Adina Verson and Michael McQuilken (Best International Performance, Amsterdam Fringe Festival). Daniel is a proud recipient of the Wesley Fata Scholarship.

ARIANA VENTURI (BERTE) is a second-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where her credits include Platonov. Regional: Robert Woodruff’s In A Year With 13 Moons (Yale Repertory Theatre); Michael Von Siebenburg Melts Through the Floorboards (Actors Theatre Louisville, directed by Kip Fagan); The Cat and the Canary (Berkshire Theatre Festival); Sousepaw (US Fringe Tour).

New York: Alex Timbers’s Dance Dance Revolution, Vendetta Chrome (Clubbed Thumb); Recess, Classic Kitchen Timer (The Flea Theater); and the sketch comedy series Ephemerama. Ari has a certificate in Shakespeare from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and a BA in English from Vassar College. This season, she also will appear in These Paper Bullets! at Yale Repertory Theatre.

MITCHELL WINTER (COMMISSIONER BRACK) is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where his credits include Sunday in the Park with George, Romeo and Juliet, Tiny Boyfriend, and The Bachelors. At Yale Summer Cabaret he appeared in Miss Julie, Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?, In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, and Tartuffe. Originally from Australia, his theatre credits there include the national tour of Cameron Mackintosh’s Miss Saigon, Thoroughly Modern Millie (The Production Company), Boy Band (Ricochet Productions), Die Fledermaus (Australian Opera Studio), and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Really Useful Group). He is a graduate of the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA).

CREATIVE TEAM STEVEN BRUSH (COMPOSER AND SOUND DESIGNER) is an awardwinning composer and sound designer working in theatre, film, and video games. He is a two-time winner of the Best Orchestration Award at the Garden State Film Festival, first for his score to the short animated film Wally and Zip in 2012 and again for his music in Star Trek Phoenix: Cloak and Dagger in 2013.

His score for the short film Dolci was nominated for best music at the 2012

CREATIVE TEAM Action on Film Festival. His theatre credits include A Streetcar Named Desire (Yale Repertory Theatre); Lottie in the Late Afternoon, Iphigenia Among the Stars (Yale School of Drama); Ain’t Gonna Make It, Ermyntrude & Esmeralda, The Ugly One (Yale Cabaret); Tartuffe (Yale Summer Cabaret); The Last Witch, The Mystery Plays, The Love Talker (University of Washington); and The Cat and the Canary (Berkshire Theatre Festival). He is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama.

ADRIAN MARTINEZ FRAUSTO (SCENIC DESIGNER) is a second-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama. Originally from Mexico City, Adrian studied Interior Architecture at CENTRO de Cine Diseño y Television before moving to scenic design. He assisted scenic designer Sergio Villegas during the Mexican Independence Bicentennial and Revolution Centennial celebrations. He also assisted scenic designer Edyta Rzewuska on a number of plays and operas.

Adrian was the lead designer in the XXV Alarcónian Theatrical Festival in the city of Taxco, Guerrero. Some of his credits include Opera de Fondo, directed by Vanessa Martinez in Mexico City, and Dutchman directed by Katherine McGerr at Yale Cabaret.

SHANNON L. GAUGHF (STAGE MANAGER) is a second-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where she has stage managed Romeo and Juliet and served as assistant stage manager for Sunday in the Park with George and House Beast. Her other credits include Owners (assistant stage manager, Yale Repertory Theatre), Cowboy Mouth (Yale Cabaret), and Hello Dolly! (production assistant, Goodspeed Musicals). Shannon graduated magna cum laude from St. Mary’s College of California, where she earned a BA in technical theatre and design.

SOULE GOLDEN (COSTUME DESIGNER) is a Connecticut native and secondyear MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama. She has worked on projects for the Joffrey Ballet, San Francisco Opera, Santa Fe Opera, on Broadway, and in film. Design credits include The Ugly One, The Most Beautiful Thing in the World, and Milk Milk Lemonade at Yale Cabaret. Recent New York credits include the ongoing dance piece On the Floor at the Ace Hotel and Reefer Madness at Gallery Players.

KATHERINE McGERR (DIRECTOR) is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where she has previously directed The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare and No More Sad Things by Hansol Jung. At Yale Cabaret she directed Dutchman by Amiri Baraka, Chamber Music by Arthur Kopit, and Christie in Love by Howard Brenton. Katherine spent seven seasons with the Chautauqua Theater Company, where she served as artistic associate and literary manager, directed workshops of An Incident by Anna Ziegler and Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates, and most

recently, associate directed The Romeo and Juliet Project, an inter-arts collaboration among Chautauqua’s theatre, opera, ballet, and music programs.

She has been the directing fellow at Shakespeare Theatre Company, artistic resident at Long Wharf Theatre, artistic coordinator at Playwrights Realm, and artistic assistant at Yale Repertory Theatre. Other directing credits include Caryl Churchill’s Seagulls (Long Wharf Next Stage) and Gertrude Stein's Listen To Me (Barnard College). She has assistant directed for Tina Landau, Ethan McSweeny, Vivienne Benesch, David Muse, Maria Aitken, Gordon Edelstein, and Eric Ting, among others. As a dramaturg, she has worked on numerous regional and New York productions, including the east coast premiere of Donald Margulies's Shipwrecked, the world premiere of Anna Deavere Smith’s Let Me Down Easy (script assistant), and the Broadway revival of South Pacific (research assistant).

A native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Katherine grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, and Bloomington, Indiana. She is a graduate of the O’Neill National Theater Institute and Columbia University.

CAITLIN SMITH RAPOPORT (LIGHTING DESIGNER) is a second-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, and has designed lighting for theatre, dance, music, and circus. Recent collaborations include The Dwight/Edgewood Project, Strong Coffee Stage, Berkshire Fringe Festival, SUNY College at Oneonta, Nimble Arts Circus, Sandglass Puppet Theater, New World Theater, and The National Asian American Theater Festival. Yale School of Drama design credits include Romeo and Juliet and The Visit. She holds a BA in theatre and English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

JENNIFER SCHMIDT (PRODUCTION DRAMATURG) is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where her dramaturgy credits include The Really Big Fat Show, What a Very Pretty Pageant!, Blueberry Toast, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. At Yale Cabaret, she served as dramaturg for Dutchman, and performed in Creation 2011 and Ain’t Gonna Make It. Jennifer received her BA in English from Carleton College.

PAUL WALSH (TRANSLATOR) teaches in the Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism department at Yale School of Drama. He served for nine years as senior dramaturg at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater, which produced his translations of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (2004) and Hedda Gabler (2007). His translation of Ibsen’s The Master Builder played at Yale Repertory Theatre in 2009 after premiering at the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley. His translations of the five chamber plays of August Strindberg were produced in 2012 by San Francisco’s Cutting Ball Theater and published by Exit Press. In addition, Walsh has worked as dramaturg, translator, and co-author with theatre companies across the country, including Theatre de la Jeune Lune, with whom he collaborated on such award-winning productions as Children of Paradise: Shooting a Dream, Don Juan Giovanni, Germinal, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

YALE SCHOOL OF DRAMA STAFF James Bundy, Dean Victoria Nolan, Deputy Dean Joan Channick, Associate Dean ARTISTIC Jennifer Kiger, Associate Artistic Director Director of New Play Programs Amy Boratko, Literary Manager Ruth M. Feldman, Director of Education and Accessibility Services Kay Perdue Meadows, Artistic Associate Benjamin Fainstein, Artistic Coordinator Dana Tanner-Kennedy, Literary Associate Lindsay King, Teresa Mensz, Library Services Josie Brown, Senior Administrative Assistant to the Artistic Director and Associate Artistic Director Laurie Coppola, Senior Administrative Assistant for the Directing, Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism, Playwriting, and Stage Management Departments Mary Volk, Senior Administrative Assistant for the Design, Sound Design, and Projection Departments ADMINISTRATION Caitie Hannon, Lauren Wainwright, Associate Managing Directors Molly Hennighausen, Assistant Managing Director Chiara Klein, Management Assistant Emalie Mayo, Senior Administrative Assistant to the Managing Director Sarah Williams, Company Manager Gretchen Wright, Assistant Company Manager Development and Alumni Affairs Deborah S. Berman, Director of Development and Alumni Affairs Janice Muirhead, Senior Associate Director of Development Alyssa Simmons, Associate Director of Development Barry Kaplan, Senior Staff Writer Susan C. Clark, Development and Alumni Affairs Officer Jane Youngberg, Development Associate Belene Day, Senior Administrative Assistant to Development and Marketing & Communications Finance and Information Technology Katherine D. Burgue単o, Director of Finance and Human Resources Cristal Coleman, Joanna Romberg, Business Office Specialists Giana Cusanelli, Ashlie Russell, Business Office Assistants

Sarah Stevens-Morling, Interim Director of Information and Communications Systems Daryl Brereton, Associate Information Technology Director Janna J. Ellis, Director, Yale Tessitura Consortium Toni Ann Simiola, Senior Administrative Assistant to Business Office, Information Technology, Operations, and Tessitura Marketing, Communications, and Audience Services Anne Trites, Director of Marketing and Communications Steven Padla, Senior Associate Director of Communications Daniel Cress, Senior Associate Director of Marketing Rachel Smith, Associate Director of Marketing Brittany Behrens, Associate Director of Marketing Marguerite Elliott, Publications Manager Kathleen Martin, Online Communications Assistant Libby Peterson, Marketing Assistant Fraver, Graphic Designer T. Charles Erickson, Production Photographer Laura Kirk, Interim Associate Director of Audience Services Shane Quinn, Interim Assistant Director of Audience Services Tracy Baldini, Subscriptions Coordinator Evan Beck, Paul Cook, Cle Dupuy, Anthony Jasper, Katie Metcalf, Andrew Moore, Sophie Nethercut, Emily Sanna, Peter Schattauer, Elena Sokol, Box Office Assistants OPERATIONS Diane Galt, Director of Facility Operations Ian Dunn, Operations Associate Joe Proto, Arts and Drama Zone Superintendent VonDeen Ricks, Sherry Stanley, Team Leaders Marcia Riley, Facility Steward Lucille Bochert, Kathy Langston, Warren Lyde, Patrick Martin, Louis Moore, Mark Roy, Garland Short, Custodians Theater Safety and Occupational Health William J. Reynolds, Director of Theater Safety and Occupational Health Jacob Thompson, Security Officer Ed Jooss, Audience Safety Officer Kevin Delaney, Fred Geier, Patrick Grant, Customer Service and Safety Officers

PRODUCTION Bronislaw J. Sammler, Head of Production James Mountcastle, Production Stage Manager Jonathan Reed, Production Manager Steven Schmidt, Associate Head of Production and Work-Study Supervisor Grace O’Brien, Senior Administrative Assistant to the Production and Theater Safety and Occupational Health Departments Scenery Neil Mulligan, Matt Welander, Technical Directors Alan Hendrickson, Electro Mechanical Laboratory Supervisor Eric Sparks, Shop Foreman Matt Gaffney, Ryan Gardner, Sharon Reinhart, Master Shop Carpenters Brandon Fuller, Shop Carpenter Kelly Rae Fayton, Alexandra Reynolds, Assistants to the Technical Director Painting Ru-Jun Wang, Scenic Charge Lia Akkerhuis, Nathan Jasunas, Assistant Scenic Artists Kevin Klakouski, Assistant to the Painting Supervisor Properties Brian Cookson, Properties Master David P. Schrader, Properties Craftsperson Jennifer McClure, Interim Properties Master Bill Batschelet, Properties Stock Manager Elizabeth Zevin, Assistant to the Properties Manager Costumes Tom McAlister, Costume Shop Manager Robin Hirsch, Associate Costume Shop Manager Clarissa Wylie Youngberg, Mary Zihal, Senior Drapers Deborah Bloch, Harry Johnson, Senior First Hands Linda Kelley-Dodd, Costume Project Coordinator Denise O’Brien, Wig and Hair Design Barbara Bodine, Company Hairdresser Linda Wingerter, Costume Stock Manager Electrics Donald W. Titus, Lighting Supervisor Linda-Cristal Young, Senior Head Electrician Brian Quiricone, Head Electrician Daniel Hutchinson, Assistant to the Lighting Supervisor

Sound Mike Backhaus, Sound Supervisor Monica Avila, Staff Sound Engineer Gahyae Ryu, Stephanie Smith, Assistants to the Sound Supervisor Projections Erich Bolton, Projection Supervisor ADDITIONAL STAFF FOR HEDDA GABLER Izmir Ickbal, Assistant Scenic Designer Alexae Visel, Assistant Costume Designer Rasean Davonte Johnson, Assistant Lighting Designer Brian Hickey, Assistant Sound Designer and Engineer Emely Zepeda, Assistant Stage Manager Kaitlyn Anderson, Associate Production Manager Sanghun Joung, Technical Director Nicholas Christiani, Mitchell Cramond, Assistant Technical Directors Kevin Klakouski, Scenic Charge Pat Lawrence, Properties Master Nikki Fazzone, Draper Michael Best, Master Electrician Kat Wepler, Stage Carpenter Alyssa Simmons, House Manager Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Elivia Bovenzi, Ryan Campbell, Phillip Howze, Stephanie Smith, Nick Vogelpohl, Dustin Wills, Run Crew SPECIAL THANKS: Adam Calderon and Mariana Sanchez Hernandez; Brent Evans; Peter Heyl; Pat, Uma, and Fraser Lawrence; Cole Lewis and Dustin Wills; Blake Segal; Reid Thompson;

THE TAKING OF PHOTOGRAPHS OR THE USE OF RECORDING DEVICES OF ANY KIND IN THE THEATRE WITHOUT THE WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE MANAGEMENT IS PROHIBITED.

OPENING NIGHT SPONSOR Hedda Gabler February 1–7, 2014 University Theatre, 222 York Street

Brenton Evans PIANOS

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