The Liar and the Caged – Searching for a Way out: From A Streetcar Named Desire to Hedda Gabler
Following Rock Rock Crafting Collective’s debut production of A Streetcar Named Desire, it presented Henrik Ibsen’s classic Hedda Gabler. For this talk, director Chen Yow-Ruu and script translator Siraya Pai were invited to analyze the reasons that these two works are considered classics and how they are reinterpreted and presented with contemporary dialogue.
How is a classic defined?
Discussing the reasons why these two texts are classics is also an attempt to answer the question of why they are frequently adapted for the stage and big screen. Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen has been hailed as the father of modern drama. One of the early channels through which Asian societies came in contact with Western dramas was through Ibsen. However, Norway is not a cultural or an economic center of Europe. So, how did modern dramas emerge from this country considered to be along Europe’s periphery? One key is that Norway completed its modernization process in a relatively short time compared to other countries. Ibsen accurately captured the enormous upheavals that Norwegian society experienced. In Asian societies that are facing similar modernization processes, no matter in the aftermath of the May Fourth Movement or the promotion of New Drama in Japan, many of Ibsen’s works have been performed and Taiwan has been indirectly influenced by this.
A Streetcar Named Desire is also set in a period of dramatic change. Its playwright, Tennessee Williams, was from the southern US. In this script, he explored the decline of the South following the American Civil War and how Southerners coped with it. As individuals, how mindsets change and how social upheaval is faced resonate in seemingly distant Asian societies.
Bringing the classics into a contemporary context
Looking at the characters, Blanche DuBois is entitled and living in a fantasy world, while Hedda Gabler is a psychopathic manipulator and arsonist. Pai noted that male playwrights who created such female characters did not simply misunderstand women or were misogynistic. Rather, they used portrayals of women because they were under more constraints than men to express the relationships between individuals and society. These scripts are popular because they are like soap operas. It is precisely due to their trivial plots and unlikable characters that the difficulties of their situation become clear, producing resonance.
Both characters exist along a boundary. Gabler lived in the late 19th century, between the decline of the aristocracy and the rise of the middle class (such as her husband George Tesman). In the 1940s, the traditional landowning class to which Dubois belonged crumbled in the American South and the working class was on the rise. Most audience members in 2026 have experienced the transition from the analog to the digital age. Today’s rapid pace of technological advancement is unsettling. Chen believes that the largest similarity between life today and that described in these two texts is certain shared experiences: uncertainty about the future and a state of wandering along the margins. It is precisely this uncertainty that captivates people and piques their curiosity about the consequences that actions bring.
(Life) desire and death
One of Dubois’ most well-known lines is “I've always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Another is, “The opposite (of death) is desire.” Having desires proves that she is still alive and reverses her experiences of witnessing the demise of everything: youth, family, and a glorious era. Pai said that the core theme of Hedda Gabler is also related to life and desire, with two important symbols. One is the pistol she inherited from her father, which she uses to manipulate those around her and even her own life. The second is Dionysus, the Greek god of wine. She suddenly imagines her ex-boyfriend wearing a crown of grapes, like that of Dionysus, as he shares his works in a banquet hall. In Greek culture, unlike the god of the sun who symbolizes order, Dionysus represents darkness, revelry, the dark side, and the creative power of the arts; life bursting forth as order is destroyed. The pistol is death and Dionysus is life. In the chaos of her cage, life is expressed through desire. When she feels that she is no longer in control, she chooses death as the ultimate expression of life.
Reinterpreting the classics
When adapting a classic for the stage, an unavoidable issue in contemporary interpretation is the striking of a balance in terms of the level of localization. The consensus of this collective was to avoid overly obvious historical references and opt for a neutral approach rather than try to recreate that era or bring this work into a Taiwanese context. The aim was to respect the universe of the work itself. For example, different ways of addressing people represent their different identities and affect the characters’ state of mind. In Hedda Gabler, changing the way people are addressed was heavily used to playfully explore the relationships among roles. Pai noted that initially the translated version remained true to the original. However, during the premiere, they discovered that having a character with three titles or ways of being addressed affected the audience’s understanding of the work. They subsequently decided to abandon this approach in favor of a method that audiences could more easily comprehend.
Another challenge was the length of the work. Audiences 131 years ago and today perceive the passage of time differently. When the three-hour version was presented in Kaohsiung, the production team observed that it was difficult for the audience to sit through the entire performance and the decision was made to significantly shorten it. This shortened version will be performed at the Taipei Performing Arts Center, and it is hoped that audiences will become immersed in Gabler’s life at a pace that is suited to them.
