Rob McLennan’s Theatre Studies 221 Essay Assignment (April 16, 2010)
THEA221 Assignment #1: Essay
Comparative Examination of Different Productions
This essay compares the approaches that two prominent directors—Vsevolod
Meyerhold in 1906, and Ingmar Bergman in 1964 — took in their interpretations of
Henrik Ibsen’s play Hedda Gabler. Numerous similarities exist between both
directors’ productions in their rejection of the naturalism evident in the original text.
A brief history of realism and naturalism is discussed, followed by an outline of
Meyerhold’s approach, then that of Bergman.
Realism in the theatre developed during the mid-late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries in response to a growing desire for theatre to represent the social
and political realities of bourgeois life at the time: the Industrial Revolution, the role
of women in society, poverty and disease. Theatre was no longer, for the spectator,
lightly entertaining or escapist, but rather more confrontational and challenging.
Moreover, a growing apathy towards the supernatural, religious and mythical themes
of the melodramatic traditions of the previous century and a half contributed to this
move to a deeper exploration of three key relationships in theatre production: the
psychological motives of an actor’s character; the relationship between the wider
stage environment and the actors; and the relationship between this environment and
the audience.
Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen is regarded as a chief exemplar of the
Realist movement. His play Hedda Gabler, with its psychologically complex central
character, highly detailed stage directions and themes of “inheritance, power, social
influence” (Pitches 12), was written in 1890. Although Ibsen was by now an
established and reputable playwright, when this play was first published it received
harsh criticism from all corners. It was widely regarded as confusing and insulting.
Many of the complaints expressed doubt over the meaning of the play’s violent
conclusion: Hedda’s suicide. Others took offense: “Readers got the impression that in
the concluding line of the play — ‘But, good God! People don’t do such things!” —
Ibsen was making fun of them” (Ibsen 230). Eventually, though, the play did find
critical and popular success and, because of its complex nature, has since become one
of the most reinterpreted plays of the modern era.
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Rob McLennan’s Theatre Studies 221 Essay Assignment (April 16, 2010)
One of the most noteworthy of these reinterpretations came from Russia in
1906, where Vsevolod Meyerhold, in partnership with actress Vera
Kommisarjevskaya (who played the role of Hedda), premiered the Ibsen play at the
Komissarzhevskaya Theatre in St Petersburg. Meyerhold strongly believed that
Hedda Gabler was meant to be, as he put it, ‘stylised theatre’; an opportunity to
present Ibsen’s play in new and unfamiliar ways. Speaking about Ibsen’s original
text, Meyerhold protested, "Life is not like this, and it is not what Ibsen wrote"
(Pitches 13). The features of stylised theatre included particular focuses on the actors
and their movement and expression; minimal props and scenery; the encouragement
of the spectator to use their own imagination; the freedom for the director to modify
the playwright’s original words; and the careful, painting-like construction of the
aesthetics of the production.
In an overt departure from naturalistic theatre, the set for Meyerhold’s Hedda
Gabler was curiously minimalistic. A large decorative background panel was used to
capture the essence of the whole drama. According to Samuelsen, most of the action
took place around Hedda, who was seated in a centrally placed, oversized “throne-like
chair” which was covered with white fur (12). Other significant stage items were a
white grand piano, a hanging window, lace curtains through which actors entered —
Meyerhold had dispensed altogether with doors — and “a two dimensional painted
backdrop” (12). Using a conspicuously shallow stage area (thirty feet wide but only
twelve deep), Konstantin Rudnitsky adds, "Meyerhold was striving to move the action
as close as possible to the audience, but the stage was not extended in width, the
scenes were primarily in the centre, the characters were ‘very tightly grouped
together’” (101).
These configurations, which Meyerhold used throughout the play, often
described as ‘bas-relief’ poses, were meant to symbolise the ‘essence’ of the unfolding
drama. The scene in the play when Hedda and Loevborg are first together, for
example, had the actors speaking in a kind of rhythmic monotone. Throughout the
scene’s entirety they sat “side by side, tense and motionless, looking straight ahead”
(Leach 74). The actors then continued to sit silently for some time. The result of this
motionless, expressionless acting, according to Samuelsen, was “a production in
which Ibsen’s dialogue, with its denunciations of society, became the central focus”
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Rob McLennan’s Theatre Studies 221 Essay Assignment (April 16, 2010)
(12). At other times, Meyerhold liked to vary the pace of his actors’ movement, with
deliberate pauses and interrupted motion: “…after the words ‘This contains all of me’,
[Loevborg] lapses into a thoughtful silence, straightening up and placing his hand on
the open manuscript. After a few seconds’ pause he starts to turn over the pages.”
Costumes for each character were symbolically colour-coded and designed to “capture
the essence of the character” (Pitches 14). Tesman and Brack were dressed in darkgray, in tune with their respectability; Loevborg’s brown suit and Thea’s rose dress
provided contrast to “cold, regal, autumnal” (Rudnitsky 88) Hedda’s green dress.
In regards to the actor-audience relationship, there was an unspoken code of
self awareness present at all times. Meyerhold felt that both the actor and spectator
should be deliberately kept conscious of their roles in a theatre event. Meyerhold
drew inspiration from the art world. In much the same way as a person might
appreciate a painting in a gallery, clearly the work of an artist, Meyerhold believed
that patrons aware of the machinations of the actors’ or stage director’s work would
take away a longer-lasting impression from the theatrical experience. Spectators were
encouraged to observe how the stage environment “suggested the thematic concerns
of the play” (Pitches 14).
In 1964, at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, Sweden, Ingmar
Bergman revived Hedda Gabler with, as Lise-Lone and Frederick J. Marker put it,
“one of the truly revolutionary and influential Ibsen productions of this century”
(178). The set design was described as a “starkly simplified and stylised
interpretation [which] created a tightly controlled distillation in which nothing was
permitted to distract from the ruling image of the play as a drama of destiny, a cold
fable of characters buried alive in a deadly vacuum” (179).
It exhibited a number of striking similarities to Meyerhold’s effort nearly
sixty years prior. Bergman, too, had an “extraordinary gift for compressing the
essence of a situation into one eloquent visual image” (Marker 199). This was
exemplified in the scene where Hedda feeds Loevborg’s precious manuscript into the
fire (represented by the prompter’s box at front and centre of stage). Intense lights
cast shadows of the sorrowful figures of Tesman and the mourning Miss Tesman to
produce a single snapshot encapsulating “the image of physical death merged with the
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Rob McLennan’s Theatre Studies 221 Essay Assignment (April 16, 2010)
image of Hedda and the motif of death-in-life, emotional sterility and inhumanity that
she embodies” (Marker 199).
Bergman had a reputation for the cunning selection of cohesive acting
ensembles for productions — film and stage — and for extracting the best out of those
actors (Marker 206-7). An essential rule of Bergman’s “theater poetics” is the
“subordination at all times of the technical dynamics of staging to the creative
presence of the living actor” (Marker 206); the only purpose of these “external
components” — props, costume, lighting — is to “stimulate the imagination in the
audience” (Marker 183). Bergman himself explained in his autobiography, The Magic
Lantern, the only things necessary in a theatrical performance are the text, the actors
and the audience; everything else was “bulky lumber” (194). With that in mind, he
stripped the set of all Ibsen’s original artefacts: the thick carpets, dark porcelain stove,
curtained French windows, even the portrait of Hedda’s father, General Gabler. All
references to the ‘vine leaves’, too, were deliberately ignored (Marker 180). Bergman
gave Hedda’s protective “inner” room equal prominence to the main room of the
original play, placing its key symbols — Hedda’s piano and her father’s pistols — in
full view of the audience. The set consisted of:
two small rooms divided with a small, vertical screen, with short rehearsal
screens as walls, and with the only furniture a sofa, two chairs and a desk. By
placing the play’s smaller inner room on-stage, Bergman refused to allow
Hedda any escape; she was constantly trapped on-stage, in this close,
claustrophobic environment.
(Samuelsen 13)
Even when not directly involved in the action Hedda would be seen pacing,
gesticulating, displaying self-contempt, frustration at her pregnancy, striking poses in
front of the mirror, and so on. Furthermore, the set was placed as far downstage as the
theatre would allow. And, as Meyerhold had done, Bergman exaggerated the
available width of the stage by creating a shallow barricade of low screens around the
production's playing area. This enabled him to drawing attention to the separation of
characters. Conversations, for example, between Hedda and the other characters
could take place at opposite sides of the stage, heightening the tension.
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Rob McLennan’s Theatre Studies 221 Essay Assignment (April 16, 2010)
Bergman, like Meyerhold, was interested in exposing the process of theatre to
theatre-goers. Open rehearsals for the public were held so actors could develop a
more organic relationship with the audience. In his Stockholm production of Hedda
Gabler the front curtain rose only halfway several minutes before the play began,
allowing the audience to breathe in the atmosphere beforehand” (Marker 183). The
background wall screen would sporadically open, “as if moved by a ghostly hand, to
reveal a dark void in which offstage characters were seen to move” (Marker 181).
Bergman wanted to blur the traditional dichotomy of stage and spectator; make the
audience feel almost integrally involved in the action. Bergman was creatively
investigating the relationship between the audience and the auditorium; not just the
stage:
…the audience area became part of the total theatrical space. The lights in the
house were not dimmed until several minutes into the performance, and in the
second half, a strong flashlight was directed towards the stage from the far
back of the house, so that remembers of the audience became visible to each
other and were made aware of their role as spectators.
(Steene 606)
Like Meyerhold, Bergman was attracted to the distortion of space and time.
What made him rather unique was his ability to turn a fleeting moment, in real time,
into a drawn out slow motion representation on the stage. He used this technique in
his Hedda productions by getting his actors to suspend their reactions to key
developments in the play. Bergman had a preference for bringing his actors as far
forward on the stage as possible and over-exposing them to the lights in order to
create “flattened picture compositions” (Marker 193). Choreography and lighting
achieved a surreal and otherworldly sheen over the performance. Bas-relief lighting
effects were used to create abstract, unspoken moods, and dreamlike or silhouetted
effects. Low-angle projectors at the back of the auditorium erased the contours of
characters’ faces at front of stage. The oppressive, red velvet stage environment was
“illuminated by a uniformly cold light that tampered with contours and erased any
secure sense of spatial dimensionality, the characters in the drama appeared like
figures in a void” (Marker 181).
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Rob McLennan’s Theatre Studies 221 Essay Assignment (April 16, 2010)
By comparison to Meyerhold, Bergman’s costume colours were more
subdued. Hedda was presented in a dark green while the other characters were
dressed in colours ranging from “pale gray and olive to black” (Marker 181). And
like Meyerhold’s costumes, they too were only vaguely referential to any particular
period in time, further departing from any real sense of temporal dimension.
In their reinterpretations of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, Vsevolod Meyerhold and
Ingmar Bergman were notably similar in their adoption of stylised and antinaturalistic methods. Both directors minimised stage objects; harnessed the essence
of character through manipulation of movement; negated the dimensions of time and
space; placed, on a shallow stage, actors as close as possible to the audience; drew
from the art world to arrange actors as static images; and encouraged members of the
audience to engage more cerebrally and closely with the actors and their environment.
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Rob McLennan’s Theatre Studies 221 Essay Assignment (April 16, 2010)
Works Cited
Ibsen, Henrik. A Dolls House. Plays Two. Trans. Michael Meyer. London:
Methuen, 1980.
Leach, Robert. When he touches your heart... the revolutionary theatre of Vsevolod
Meyerhold and the development of Mikhail Chekhov, Contemporary Theatre
Review, Volume 7, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 65 – 83.
Marker, Lise-Lone and Frederick J. Marker. Ingmar Bergman: Four Decades in the
Theater Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Pitches, Jonathan. Vsevolod Meyerhold. London: Routledge, 2003.
Rudnitsky, Konstantin. Meyerhold the Director. Trans. George Petrov. Michigan:
Ardis: 1981.
Samuelsen, Eric, Xiong Cheng-yu, and Nola D. Smith. Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler:
A Study Guide for the Margetts Theatre Production, November 19 - December
5, 1992. Theatre and Film Department, Brigham Young University, 1992.
Steene, Birgitta. Ingmar Bergman: a reference guide. Amsterdam: Amsterdam
University Press, 2005.
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