By Cynthia Zarin January 9, 2026 Ghost light in a darkened theater. Photograph by Jon Ellwood, via Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. During a week in December when violence seemed to rap on every door, I saw two plays about women who take their lives into their own hands: Hedda Gabler at the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, and Anna Christie at Saint Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. The plays were written thirty years apart.