ORLANDO: A Rhapsody

Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf is a satirical, fantastical, political novel that follows the life of a hero/ine who lives 300 years and moves from one gender to another. In Orlando: A Rhapsody, father and daughter play the same character at different ages of their life. But Orlando: A Rhapsody soon takes on a life of its own, far beyond the original novel: weaving in material from Woolf’s body of work (The Waves and A Room of One’s Own), while also incorporating Shakespeare, feminist philosophy, music, movement, autobiography. Orlando: A Rhapsody is a duet performance that layers questions of fiction, age, filiality, death, but most of all, gender. It places gender onstage as theatrical material to wrestle with, in all of its violence and all of its poetry. It is a highly intimate and political form whose strength and specificity are borne from two actors who are confronting all of these themes as father and daughter.