Hedda Gabler & Sirens: Elektra in Bosnia: Two Plays

Two plays from the leading Canadian playwright. In Judith Thompson's version of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, a recently married Hedda navigates her new identity as a wife and the intense constraints put on her by society. She prefers pistols to cooking and does not care for raising a family. As Hedda fights against the pressures of her new life and her own neuroses, she comes to terms with an untimely choice. A moving exploration of female oppression, this version of Hedda Gabler was first staged at the Shaw Festival, Ontario, in 1991. Sirens: Elektra in Bosnia is a gripping story about the horrors of collective and personal wars as a family torn apart by death and destruction becomes their own worst enemy. When a deal between Agamemnon and his brother Menelaus goes awry, Iphigenia becomes the blood sacrifice leading to truths her sister Elektra can no longer hide from. Against the backdrop of a family drama, Judith Thompson gives voice to the women who were silenced during the Bosnian War, examining a cultural trauma and its place in our collective history.