IBSEN’S ‘HEDDA’ HAS NEW MEANING FOR EMILY MANN

Emily Mann has been getting a lot of requests to do a play about Central America.

That’s not surprising. She has carved out a unique niche for herself as a writer and director who is skilled at weaving documentary information with personal vision on controversial political subjects.

In 1981, “Still Life,” her play about the effects of the Vietnam War, won six Obie Awards. Her most recent play, “Execution of Justice,” played on Broadway last spring. “Execution,” which deals with the trial of Dan White, the ex-San Francisco policeman and city supervisor who shot San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and the self-proclaimed gay City Supervisor Harvey Milk, won numerous awards and was included in “Best Plays of 1986.”

The only thing surprising about the Central America play idea is that so far she has turned all the offers down.

Instead she is throwing herself into directing “Hedda Gabler” at the La Jolla Playhouse’s Warren Theatre. Previews begin tonight, and the play opens July 5.

Why “Hedda Gabler,” one of Henrik Ibsen’s least political plays? Why this 97-year-old story about a woman in an unhappy marriage?

Mann has been fascinated with Norwegian playwright Ibsen since she did “A Doll’s House”--twice.

“I began to realize how contemporary a writer Ibsen is . . . He’s funny, passionate and sexy as hell. He’s much more someone who looks into the human soul than a politician,” she said.

It’s a side of Ibsen that Mann relates to.

“I was put into a rigid role as a political writer and director. I’m less a social commentator and more of a philosopher. I’ve always been interested in the human soul.”

“A Doll’s House” has traditionally been thought of as a political play about a wife who leaves her husband to achieve a greater measure of independence. The simplicity of this interpretation is one that Mann emphatically rejects.

“ ‘A Doll’s House” is not a feminine tract in the least. What he (Ibsen) is talking about is the tragedy of a marriage that has to dissolve . . . The horror of watching this play is . . . anyone who has ever loved anyone . . . has their nightmare on stage in that last scene. You’ve either been the one who has gotten hit with ‘I’m leaving,’ or you’re the person who feels he has to go. Everyone has had a breakup, and the terror is, ‘My God, is the person sitting next to me watching the play today also thinking about this?’ ”

It was her last version of “A Doll’s House,” performed at Hartford Stage, that prompted La Jolla Playhouse’s artistic director Des McAnuff to ask her to do “Hedda Gabler,” which has a similar, but even more tragic theme of husband-wife conflict.

At first she picked up the play reluctantly. She remembered reading it as an undergraduate at Harvard College and thinking that Hedda was a monster.

Now, she said, at age 35 she sees Hedda differently.

“‘Hedda seems like a less accessible play because she is usually portrayed as a monster. But as I see it she is very much someone who is looking for a way to survive in a world she’s constructed that is unlivable. We’ve all been there as well, male or female. It’s the horror of being in a bad marriage and not knowing how to get out of it.

“In this production they (Hedda and her husband) are all much more aware of the pain they’re in. It’s just that he’s crazy about her. He’s got the girl that every man went after. She’s 29 . . . she’s young. But it’s not so different from our society. She had to make a decision. She was going to be an old maid. No one else was around. She married Tesman. He was a perfectly accessible choice. But she was in love with and obsessed by another man.”

“Ibsen’s studies of women are brilliant. Daring. He dares to say things . . . that very few have touched except the Greeks and Shakespeare and (Tennessee) Williams perhaps. All these things have drawn me to him.”

For Mann, it is not only time but the importance of certain relationships in her life that has influenced her perspective on these plays. Six and a half years ago she married Gerry Bamman, an actor whom she met while directing at the Guthrie in 1979. Bamman worked on a new translation of “A Doll’s House” and “Hedda Gabler” with Irene B. Berman. Bamman also appeared in “A Doll’s House” and will appear in “Hedda Gabler.”

By the second time Mann did “A Doll House,” she had given birth to Nicholas, who is now 3 1/2 years old and a favorite topic of conversation. Her love for her son expanded the meaning of the play from a woman who is walking out of a marriage to a woman who is walking out and leaving behind a husband and three children. The change was reflected in the props: “Suddenly there was a huge toy box on stage.”

Although Mann has not stopped being interested in politics, she does see her edges as having “softened a little.”

“I’m growing up. (And as you grow) I think you keep on redefining what you do.

“Relationships have always interested me. I think that’s what brought me into theater in the first place. I always used to have my antennae out for other people.”

And one thing she senses about other people now is that they are jaded about politics.

“The fears have gone deeper. And I think people don’t even know what it is they’re so afraid of.”

She’s not saying that she won’t ultimately write that play about Central America, but right now her interest in relationships is catching up with her political concerns.

“It’s all beginning to merge better,” she said. “I’m in the middle of a transition. I can’t articulate it, but it feels good. It feels right.”