Nobody would ever label Mark Spina a traditionalist. This award-winning director likes to challenge himself..and his audiences. Well-known for picking cutting edge material, he’s selected one of the most unconventional plays of recent years, THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF HEDDA GABLER, to open his first season in Maplewood. Written by Jeff Whitty, who won a Tony for authoring the book of the hit musical AVENUE Q, the script uses the climax of the Henrik Ibsen classic as its point of departure. It sends the title heroine on a fantastic journey through a netherworld populated with other famous characters, including Medea and Mammy from GONE WITH THE WIND.
Amid a frenetic rehearsal schedule, Spina caught his breath long enough to comment on the project:
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What made you pick this script?
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I like plays that challenge social conventions, and embrace theatricality, rather than realism. We can't compete with movies’ ability to blow up buildings convincingly, but we can have actors play multiple roles on a simple set and take the audience as far as their imaginations will let them go. This show does that, entertaining and challenging us with some very interesting questions.
How do you classify it: A Farce? Satire? Fantasy? Dramady? All of the above?
I think it's a fantastic satire of political correctness.
Most people are probably ignorant of the source material. Isn’t knowledge of the original HEDDA GABLER necessary to appreciate her “further adventures?” How will you compensate for a patron’s ignorance of Ibsen?
In the opening scene, the author does a great job of filling the audience in: at the end of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, she shoots herself in the head. That's all you need to know.
This play deals with various stereotypes. Won’t some people find this offensive?
The author includes modern characters in the play who express that disapproval. The question is, how do we deal with the stereotypes from the past? Should we pretend they never existed? Or do we somehow try to integrate them into the continuum of our constantly evolving social consciousness?
In the original production, 5 actors played multiple roles. Have you duplicated the same assignments? How hard was it to cast this play?
We've divided the roles a little bit differently. We needed actors with a strong sense of period style to be able to switch back and forth between the old and the new in the play. It was a long process, but we found a great cast. Liz Zazzi plays Hedda and heads our group of seven, alongside Gary Glor, Rick Delaney, Rasha Jay, Rachelle M. Dorse, Jason Gillis and Dennis DaPrile. (The first four are members of Actors Equity Association.)
What do you want audiences to “take away” from this experience?
I think The Further Adventures ... has a lot to say about the vital part storytelling plays in bringing us closer or farther from people who we believe are very different from ourselves. Books, plays, legends, films -- if there were no Will and Grace, would there be gay marriage in so many states? But mostly, it’s a play about the nature of life: figuring out what you can change, and making peace with what you can't.
THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF HEDDA GABLER will run for three weekends, as follows:
Opening Weekend
Thursday, Sep 20 8PM
Friday, Sep 21 at 8PM
Saturday, Sep 22 8PM
Sunday Matinee Sep 23 2PM
Fri Evenings, Sep 28 & Oct 5 8PM
Sat Matinees, Sep 29 & Oct 6 2PM
Sat Evenings, Sep 29 & Oct 6 8PM
Sun Matinees, Sep 30 & Oct 7 2PM
A post-show discussion will be held after each Friday performance. Performances will be held at the Burgdorff Center for the Performing Arts, 10 Durand Road in Maplewood, NJ. Call 973-763-4029 or visit www.thetheaterproject.org for further information.
