Playbill of events

Our performance transports the audience into a timeless space, where we encounter a generation born in the Soviet Union.

In Ibsen’s classic version, Hedda is a woman trapped between her longing for freedom and the constraints of society.

The director’s interpretation places the story within a post-Soviet context, where Hedda Gabler’s father is reimagined as a Soviet general. The heroine no longer represents just a woman of high society, but the child of a dictator — raised in an atmosphere of ideology, control, and fear. This shift redefines the entire narrative field.

Hedda’s father, though physically absent in the play, becomes a powerful presence — both as a portrait on the wall and as an internal force shaping her psyche. In the Soviet historical context, he embodies the archetypal authoritarian “father-state”: discipline, order, duty, and control. Hedda inherits not only the outward traits — coldness, elegance, restraint — but also deep inner captivity, suppressed emotions, and a fear of individuality.

In this version, Hedda symbolizes a generation that emerged from a totalitarian past but never fully escaped it. The possibilities of the modern world — choice, freedom, personal identity — paralyze her. She does not know how to use them. Like many, she feels exhausted by the freedom that is, in truth, only a shadow, because within her life the “inner general.” Much like in postcolonial societies, Hedda’s generation suffers from a syndrome of internal colonization: the external chains are gone, but the internal conditioning — obedience, fear, control — remains. She cannot be honest with herself. Her irritation, cynicism, and manipulation are symptoms of an unprocessed trauma.