KUAN-YU STANLEY LIN

Ibsen’s most memorable character, Hedda Gabler, wages a life-and-death struggle to conquer the frustration and despair engendered by the mediocrity and compromise surrounding her. She throws her entire being into a passionate attempt to reclaim human life from its prosaic and ignoble bourgeois nature.

What if, the whole event is just a show? The lights are up, the camera is rolling, the host is shuffling through his cue cards and the audience are hushed. Their eyes are hungry for the faces that they have seen on the big screen, the glossy pages, and the newsfeeds. Set in a familiar scenario of a gossip talk show, the characters of Ibsen’s magnum opus—Hedda Gabler, are itching to jump off the page to the materialistic 21st Century where only the power of money rules. They tittle-tattle about men, women, society, and more importantly, about the myth of their lives—more what ifs: what if it was Lövborg who came back and proposed to Hedda? What if Mrs. Elevated was aware of Hedda’s secret tricks? What if Tesman overheard Hedda and Lövborg’s conversation about their past? A seemingly comfortable gossip gradually turns into a half-laughing, half-bitter mockery, scrutinized by the ever-present public eye of the audience. Of course they talk about the suicide, but what if, Hedda realizes that she is just a fictional character and people buy tickets to see her killing herself? In the final act, she performs an excerpt to wrap up the show: lights dim, spotlight on her. She loads her pistol and raises it to her temple. Lights out. The whole world hears the bang.

Through the lens of media, this adaptation invites its audience-participants to revisit the problems and topics that Ibsen confronts them with and investigates contemporary issues, including consumer capitalism, intrusion of privacy through social media and celebrity cultism.