Hedda

Hedda Gabler lives a life full of conventions. She is trapped: as the daughter of a general, in her marriage to the boring scientist Tesman, in the circumstances of her time, and to this day in a play. In the play, which premiered in Munich in 1891, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, writing from exile in Germany, questions the social values of his time—not only through content or deeply psychological character constellations, but above all through form and the relationship with the audience. This was one of Ibsen's achievements in his phase of discovery or revelation dramas, which includes Hedda Gabler. Upon returning from her honeymoon, Hedda's new home becomes a prison and a multidimensional crime scene. More and more people arrive at the villa: Aunt Julle, Judge Brack, Thea Elvsted, and Ejlert Løvborg. They all gather around a woman who seeks beauty, lust, and the absolute, but cannot find it in this life, is not allowed to find it. This develops into an immense negative force that leads to a double suicide. The team around WORX director Heiki Riipinen works with the original text and attempts to recharge the play, breaking with familiar narrative styles. The modern classic becomes a "body horror" about power, social responsibility, and the "horror of reproduction"—in both a biological and social sense. The audience acts as accomplices, as thinking and feeling observers. By Daniel Grünauer