It is not without difficulty that I set out to explain, briefly, my passion for this play. I would sooner write a dissertation than distill what I think and feel about it. But I will do my best.
 

This is my dream role. My only bucket-list role, and it has been for nearly twenty-four years. I feel an urgent need to set Hedda right. I have always been deeply unsettled by the way she is portrayed, both in performance and in analysis. At some point I came across the title of a scholarly treatise on the play: “Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Bored.” Every time I remember it, a rage rises in my chest, powerful and immediate.

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To call Hedda bored is like calling Juliet defiant or Stanley angry. It is not wrong so much as small, and I cannot accept that smallness at the center of a character this beguiling. I want to right the wrongs done to her because I so deeply understand her.
 

To love a character, and to remain fascinated by a play across two and a half decades of your life, is a rare joy. Whenever I returned to the script to test whether it still held its power over me, I found something new. The play had not changed; I had.
 

About five years ago, I learned of a man named Tom Fulton: his reputation, his devotion to the Classics, his formidable résumé. Two years later, I simply called him and said I wanted to do this play and needed him to direct it.

Tom barely knew me. So when I arrived at his home with a remarkable company of six actors to read through Brian Friel’s translation, I was terribly nervous. I needed him to believe in me, and to believe in this endeavor. I feared he would not see that I deserve the chance to play her, that I love and comprehend her more than any character I have ever encountered. I feared my nerves would get the better of me and that I would fail to do her justice.

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After the seven of us read it cold, Tom and I had a moment alone. He told me, without hesitation, that I had to play her. Having him believe in me when I most needed it, is what set everything in motion and allowed this dream to keep growing. At this point, we have read it a few times over the course of a few years, with different people and for different reasons, and I could not be on this journey without him.

 

When the opportunity arose at Makeshift, and after I had worked through the particulars of Actors’ Equity’s Members’ Project Code, the most extraordinary cast I could have dreamed of came together, and we set a date.

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I am indebted to Tom, to Jane Bond, and to the many artists coming together to make this dream come true. It bears mentioning that I could not do it without the generosity of my Akron theatre family. I am profoundly grateful.

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I am also terrified, and I am also ready. 

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This has been a long time coming, and I can only hope that you, our audience, will support this undertaking.

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Thank you, from the bottom of my wild Hedda heart.

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