Orlando

In the organizer's words:

Orlando

Dramatization of the novel by Virginia Woolf

About the play

No more I love you's
The language is leaving me
No more I love you's
Changes are shifting outside the words
(The lover speaks about the monsters)
Annie Lennox

In her novel, Virginia Woolf sends her title character Orlando on a fantastic, 300-year journey through different times and gender roles. Since its publication in 1928, this novel has fascinated and inspired generations of readers, especially people who did not recognize themselves in any of the social and sexual role models intended for them. "Orlando" plays out the possibility of trying out a different life model in a playful or existential way.

The title character Orlando is born in the 16th century as a man, the scion of an old noble family. He becomes the favorite of Elizabeth I until he falls in love with a Russian princess who breaks his heart. In the 18th century, while living as an envoy in Constantinople, he transforms overnight into a woman and learns with difficulty and amusement the comforts, but also the constraints, of the new gender role. In the 19th century, she rebels against the increasingly restrictive role models and registers with astonishment the increasingly narrow range of feelings and actions in social interaction, but she rediscovers love.

In the 1920s, we see her as a woman living in her time, a time in which people are alienated from one another through increased mobility and diverse consumption and which, in addition to unprecedented individual freedom, also contains the compulsion, or seduction, to conform. A life journey through epochs and gender that questions social conventions and the dimension of time and celebrates literature and imagination as constants of life.

In this production, the Brazilian director and performance artist and the ensemble showcase outstanding acting, a versatile stage design and opulent costumes working together. The choreographed performance of the "chorus" reflects the ironic undertone of the novel's narrative, while the four players repeatedly slip into the individual roles of Orlando's companions in the different eras. The soundtrack presents musical icons and subcultural influences.

Orlando's story has planted the seeds of playfulness, resistance to conformism and renewal in the hearts of many generations of readers and theatergoers. For the Brazilian director and performance artist Rodrigo Garcia Alves, reading the novel "Orlando" marked a turning point in his biography: born and raised in a small village in rural Brazil, the novel helped him to recognize and realize his own identity. Acting and performance offered him the opportunity to express himself artistically and to use them as a motor for his creative work. For Alves, Orlando is a love letter, but also a testimony to how nature shows us that there are no limits to identity, time and imagination.

Cast

Text version: Sarah Ruhl.
Translation: Evelyn and Rainer Iwersen.
Director: Rodrigo Garcia Alves.
Stage/costumes: Heike Neugebauer.
Music/sound design: Konstantin von Sichart.
Choreographic development: Mab Cardoso With: Simon Elias, Tim Lee, Michael Meyer, Magdalena Julia Simmel/Sofie Alice Miller, Erik Roßbander, Kathrin Steinweg.

Until further notice, Magdalena Julia Simmel plays the title role ORLANDO instead of Sofie Alice Miller.

Duration: 2:30 incl. intermission

Price information:

normal: 27€ reduced: 15€ Students of the University, HS and HfK Bremen and HKS Ottersberg: Free admission