Our Preliminary Designs
SET DESIGN
The Setting: World of the Play
Setting Rationale
The set for Hedda Gabler is conceived as a respectable late-nineteenth-century Norwegian home that is, like Hedda herself, attempting to appear more elegant and worldly than its circumstances comfortably allow. In the 1890s, prosperous European interiors often reflected the Victorian fascination with the exotic—rooms crowded with textiles, carved furniture, objects collected abroad, and particularly Persian and Oriental rugs, which were displayed not only on floors but also hung as decorative wall coverings and portières.
Here, those rugs become the architecture of the Tesman house. Suspended within dark wooden frames, they create an atmosphere that is handsome, fashionable, and slightly oppressive: a home assembled out of beautiful surfaces. They also serve a theatrical purpose. Rather than enclosing Hedda within literal walls, the rugs suggest walls while allowing the set to remain fluid, almost dreamlike. Their richness speaks to Hedda's hunger for beauty, luxury, and a larger life, while their repeated patterns and enclosing vertical panels gradually begin to feel like the bars of an exquisitely decorated cage.
The three entrances establish the geography—and, more importantly, the social geography—of Hedda's world. The garden entrance connects the room with nature, daylight, freedom, and the life that exists beyond the Tesman household; it is the visual promise of escape. The parlor entrance leads deeper into the private interior of the house, including the room associated with Hedda and General Gabler, the piano, and ultimately the most private and dangerous part of her existence. The front door is the entrance of society: visitors, propriety, gossip, obligation, and Judge Brack's increasingly threatening intrusion into Hedda's life. Thus the room stands at the intersection of three worlds—freedom outside, secrecy within, and society at the door. Throughout the play people continually enter Hedda's space from one of these worlds until there is nowhere left for her to retreat. The set may initially appear warm, luxurious, and inviting; by the end of the play, without changing a single wall, it should feel like a trap.
Design Team Challenges
-
Year — 1890: Everything should belong convincingly to the closing years of the nineteenth century. Avoid slipping backward into exaggerated mid-Victorian fashion or forward into the lighter Edwardian period.
-
Location — Kristiania, Norway: The play takes place in what is now Oslo, then called Kristiania. This is an educated, prosperous urban household—not rustic or folkloric Norway.
-
Social Class: The Tesmans are respectable upper-middle-class people aspiring toward a somewhat grander social position. Hedda, as General Gabler's daughter, comes from a more aristocratic/military world and has expectations of elegance that George cannot entirely afford.
-
Respectability: Victorian social convention governs nearly everything—marriage, sexuality, reputation, appropriate behavior between men and women, and particularly the consequences of scandal. The costumes and environment should suggest a society in which appearances matter enormously.
Character Challenges
-
Hedda's Costumes: Hedda should look distinctly more sophisticated than those around her. Her clothes can be beautifully controlled, structured and somewhat severe. Avoid making her simply "sexy." Her sexuality is more powerful when it is contained beneath the armor of respectability.
-
-
Thea's Costumes: Thea should provide a visual counterpoint to Hedda—softer, warmer, less sophisticated and perhaps slightly provincial. Her extraordinary hair is important because Ibsen repeatedly draws attention to it and Hedda's fascination with it.
-
-
George Tesman: Comfortable, respectable academic clothing rather than fashionable elegance. His clothes should suggest a decent man who dresses properly but doesn't possess Hedda's instinct for style.
-
-
Judge Brack: Immaculate, prosperous and worldly. His clothing should quietly announce that he understands society—and knows how to maneuver within it.
-
Loevborg: More intellectual/bohemian than Tesman, but he is not a stereotypical disheveled artist. He has recently reconstructed himself as a respectable man, and that effort should initially be visible.
-
Juliana and Bertha: Their clothing can belong slightly more to an earlier generation. Juliana especially provides a useful contrast between the comfortable domestic values of the old world and Hedda's restless modernity.
-
Women's Silhouette: High necklines, fitted bodices, long skirts, narrow waists and substantial sleeves appropriate to circa 1890. But no "eg of mutton sleeves."
-
Men's Silhouette: Three-piece suits, waistcoats, high collars, ties/cravats, watch chains, appropriate overcoats and hats. Clothing should generally be more formal than modern audiences instinctively expect.
-
Prop Challenges
-
General Gabler's Portrait: Important. It should dominate the room sufficiently that we feel Hedda remains her father's daughter. The General is dead, but in a sense he is always in the room.
-
The Pistols: These must look period-correct and substantial enough to carry psychological weight. They aren't incidental props—they are almost characters. Their handling and placement should be carefully rehearsed and, of course, governed by rigorous theatrical-weapons safety procedures.
-
The Manuscript: Loevborg's manuscript needs physical presence. It should look like something genuinely handwritten and substantial enough that its destruction feels shocking rather than like Hedda is burning six sheets of printer paper.
-
Writing Materials: Fountain pens were emerging, but dip pens, ink wells, blotters, writing desks, stationery and sealing materials remain visually useful and appropriate. Avoid anything that looks conspicuously twentieth century.
-
Lighting Sources: Electric lighting existed in Kristiania by this period, but domestic electricity was by no means universal. Lamps, candles and daylight are entirely appropriate and give us a beautiful opportunity to let the room grow progressively darker and more enclosed.
-
Flowers and Plants: Fresh flowers and carefully maintained houseplants help establish bourgeois respectability and domestic order—the cultivated little world Hedda finds suffocating.
-
Smoking: Cigars and cigarettes belong naturally to the male social world of the period. Whether we actually use theatrical cigarettes is another matter, but smoking paraphernalia—cigar boxes, ashtrays, matches—can help establish male privilege and intimacy.
-
Alcohol and Glassware: Decanters, cordial glasses, wine/champagne glasses and appropriate serving pieces should look period-correct. Drinking carries considerable dramatic importance around Loevborg.