Today’s guest blog comes from Stuart Fail, director of Lucy Kirkwood’s HEDDA. Be sure to follow us here and on social media to stay up to date with this first professional staging outside of Europe!
Tonight we will complete our first week of rehearsals. Ground has been broken and the cast is planting seeds of discovery to reap the harvest of the playwright’s purpose. Lucy Kirkwood wrote these words to me when we began last week after my initial email. “I’m so pleased that you have connected with the adaptation so strongly. I’m sure you will be fine without any advice from me but I would offer that one of the major interventions I made was to try and lend George (Christopher Marshall) a little more dignity. He is not a match for Hedda (Emily Belvo) but very few men could be, and he is not a fool, or rather he is only made a fool by his love for her, and he himself is aware of this.” Ms. Kirkwood and I will continue our communication throughout the process and I’m sure her kernels of wisdom will prove valuable and encouraging.
During our table work, breaking down this adaptation, the elephant in the room was why doesn’t Hedda just leave this claustrophobic life? It is the 21st century and not the 19th century, where leaving an unsatisfying marriage was difficult for a woman. Today, can’t Hedda just get up and go? Hedda responds: “no.” But how she comes to this decision is filled with many emotional discoveries she reveals at various painful moments throughout the play. And that is something to watch—our Emily Belvo explore this character.
Hedda: tablework from Jobsite Theater on Vimeo.
