Staging Ground Presents 3×30

i can’t really. rainbows, i guess. what about
the most beautiful animal? well, i don’t really
have one, but here’s two: a gazelle and a lioness.
that’s funny because a lioness, well a lioness, i
wonder if the most beautiful thing in the world
might be a lioness who has just killed a gazelle
and is walking with a dead gazelle in its mouth and
i wonder if that is the most beautiful thing. no.
no. just lions and gazelles, no eating… but lions
like to eat gazelles, so there’re two beautiful
things, and one eats the other. are they still
beautiful? well, one of them isn’t beautiful
because it’s all bloody, and one of them is, the
other one still is beautiful. if something is all
bloody, is it no longer beautiful? if something is
bloody, is it still beautiful? no. i mean, is blood
not beautiful? there’s a bloody something, it’s all
bloody. could it still be beautiful? if there’s a
beautiful gazelle with a little bit of blood on it
like there from where a lion tried to get it, would
it still be beautiful? a little bit of blood, yes.
yes, a little bit of blood. it will still be
beautiful, but a lot of blood all over something
isn’t, isn’t beautiful. it’s hurt. if a beautiful
thing is hurt does that make it ugly? or not
beautiful? or just not as beautiful? full beauty.
(close)

was playing in the background. In short, it was winter. Were my surroundings influencing my interpretation?  Did I want Hedda to be funnier than she was? I had to find out. I recently reskimmed a portion of the text. Hedda is even more hilarious than I remembered. She’s sarcastic. She’s sly and cutting. She imitates her husband’s intonation. She employs Scandinavian irony. On a regular basis. She’s one of the very first protagonists who is “bored to death.” But what of her surroundings? Ibsen is somewhat detailed in his specifications regarding décor. He depicts a well furnished drawing room with a folding door on the right, a glass door on the left, an oval table with chairs around it, a porcelain stove, a high backed armchair, a foot rest, two stools, a corner settee with round table, lamps, vases, a full sofa and a piano. My personal view is Hedda couldn’t move. With just a narrow track of well-worn carpet tread. That must have been oppressive. There’s even an inner room decorated similarly. Not to mention the whatnot. Those who bruise easily have trouble negotiating Ibsen. The author of Peer Gynt, Ghosts, Rosmersholm, John Gabriel Borkman and When We Dead Awaken is rightly regarded as a pioneer of modern drama. We shouldn’t neglect his similar contributions to modern interior design. Someone should do their thesis on that, or at least, write about it. (close)

Translated into Albanian this becomes, variously: I am sorry about your father’s nose; go away, your dog is already dead; and why are your sheep looking at me that way? (close)