Hedda Gabler (Hughes) - Acting Edition

THE STORY: Less than forty-eight hours after returning from a luxurious honeymoon, the former Hedda Gabler, now Hedda Tesman, lies dead in the parlor of her new home, the victim of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. Ibsen's terse masterpiece unflinchingly leads us to this shocking but inevitable conclusion. At the center of the play is one of the greatest roles in modern drama, the fascinating Hedda Gabler, who finds herself stranded in a seemingly ordinary but dangerously imbalanced domestic system. It includes her husband, the ambitious scholar George Tesman, his doting Aunt Julie and the powerful Judge Brack, who seems intent on playing a very large role in the young couple's life. Into this mix comes an old schoolmate of Hedda's, Thea Elvsted, who has courageously abandoned a loveless marriage in favor of the passionate partnership she has found with the troubled Eilert Lovborg, a brilliant thinker who is an academic rival of Tesman's and who shares an intense secret history with Hedda. Employing methods that virtually defined the modern psychological drama, Ibsen stealthily reveals the bitter conflicts and thwarted longings that lie just below the civilized transactions of daily life.English version by Doug Hughes Henrik Ibsen is the author of 'Hedda Gabler (Hughes) - Acting Edition', published 2000 under ISBN 9780822217848 and ISBN 0822217848.