I'd been meaning to catch something at the Estates Theater a long time. Some of you may remember when my infatuation with the Czech National Theatre began, years before, when I didn't think I could ever be a proper opera-going person. In truth, I'm still not a fan of people overdoing it and trying too hard. Theatre's meant to be enjoyable (that being said, I did spot one individual in an UnderArmour workout tee), not showy. Or at least, you're not supposed to be the showy part.
Last week, I took advantage of some spare time and headed for the Estates to see Hedda Gabler, one of the strangest and most exciting plays I've so far been exposed to. With the National Theatre version in London still fresh in my mind, I was ready for a night out, but also didn't know what to expect, exactly.
The play was, as one might expect, fully in Czech. Other than the occasional throwaway, I didn't really translate anything. Which isn't to say I didn't understand anything. Of course, knowing the play helped. Perhaps, if I hadn't, I wouldn't have dared book. And do we always leap when we know what's already waiting for us on the other side?
A small quiet voice that knows, that tells me.
Hedda's the anti-thesis of leaping, at least in my opinion. While she may seem, to the untrained eye, like a true agent of chaos and havoc, she isn't. She's the woman who throws paint at the walls, then goes hide out of sight, as evidenced by her relationship with Judge Brack. The moment bad things happen, she begins to wilt. Hide away. Even though, in the context and atmosphere of the play, consequences seem impossible. You can hide, or you can face your consequences. You can see where the road goes, but you risk ending up somewhere else. Scary stuff.
Speaking of scary, I used to be scared of walking to the theatre alone. Traversing the busy square in a country I didn't know. After dark. It's a never-ending source of astoundment to me lately - bad things happen after dark. You stayed up late. Now you know. Guess it's the price of growing older.
Then, there's the now. Walking around the theatre, despite the deserted side streets. Admiring the architecture. Finding more trust in a foreign place, but also so reliant on the invitation to find it. You discover, at times, marvelous things after dark, as well.
Back to the theatre with its plush seats and its cozy. A gorgeous Hedda with great, generous breasts and emotionless eyes. Resonating different. At first, I was surprised how much the Czech production foregrounded her relationship with Eilert Lovborg, one of her former paramours. I found it interesting, because to me, Hedda's main relationship in the play (other than the one to herself) is to Brack - a lascivous, seedy, unscrupulous character who moulds Hedda to his vision of her... to an extent. But Brack also has the advantage of seeing her as she truly is.
There's much to be questioned about Hedda - over the years, she's been made out often as a feminist icon, someone condemned and trapped by a patriarchal, sexist society, but whose ambitions turn venomous and whose potential eventually strangles her. There's great tragedy in Hedda, and while at first, you're tempted to think she's this grand belle who ends up married to a toadie, nothing's quite so...accidental. Hedda's personality, her falling short of her own grand ambitions are well mirrored in her dull, sexless, bookworm husband.
Lovborg sees, but eventually outgrows in many ways, Hedda's petty resentments and ambitions. Brack never minds them. He very articulately identifies Hedda's desire for trouble and fire, and offers his own seedy, off-putting contribution to that fire. He reduces her, despite acknowledging her potential and intelligence, to a prize and a sexual object. He understands her more, I think, than Lovborg, but also forgets to be impressed by her, which eventually puts her (and the viewer) off.
A woman's main relationship is with the projection of her own ambitions? Is that a fair thing to say? Hedda sees Lovborg's ambition and brilliance as her own, but also identifies with his heedlessness, his dangerous living, and assumes it as her own. She lives through him, and it's an immersion so complete that by the end, she must die because Lovborg has died, also. Except no. Hedda dies on account of never leaping, really. Of letting men carry her ambitions for her, and falling prey to men who, like Brack, translate her wilderness and sexuality by their own modest, ignoble desires.
And how close we, women, still are to this today.
I think it's impossible to go and, as a woman, not see yourself in Hedda to some extent. At the same time, I didn't expect to take so much interpretation from a play in someone else's tongue. The foreignness and universality of it. Finding yourself in a different place, but telling in some ways the same story.
I liked the absurdity of seeing a translated play, translated again. I liked the brutishness an sexlessness of the male actors. In the English version, somehow, even Tesman, Hedda's dullard of a husband, is slightly attractive, but not here. Here, all the men are more or less ordinary. Even a little nauseating. Is the message to rise above men? Or simply to recognize the potential of your own ambitions before they strangle you?
And is this to say that, despite our language barriers, we are all secretly the same? Or am I simply too involved in my own story to manage to ever see truly beyond it?
For now, a reminder. Don't let the Bracks of the world shift you off course. But don't set too much hopes on promising Lovborgs, either.
In small words, I had so much fun. I thrive on places like this. The hushed air inside a theatre. The up-to-interpretation that, for a few hours, takes over my world.
