Orlando - Academy Theater Vienna

In a version by Tom Silkeberg, translated by Melanie Walz and Ursel Allenstein

Orlando lives for almost four centuries, is young, intelligent, and handsome. As an aspiring nobleman at the Elizabethan court and the queen's toyboy, he falls in love with the daughter of a Russian envoy. After being abandoned by her, he requests a transfer as a diplomat to Constantinople. There, Orlando experiences a political uprising and falls into a trance. When he awakens from this, Orlando is a woman. This surprise inspires a witty and ironic exploration of the changing spirit of the times, female role models, and the growing number of possible and contradictory "selves."

Virginia Woolf wrote ORLANDO as a love letter to the glamorous author Vita Sackville-West. The Swedish director Therese Willstedt stages Woolf's never-aging fantastic pseudo-biography as a monologue for an ensemble, as a play of imagination, as a plea for boundlessness, free self-expression, and fluid identities.

Director: Therese Willstedt
Text version: Tom Silkeberg
Set and lighting: Mårten K. Axelsson
Costumes: Maja Mirkovic
Music: Emil Assing Høyer
Dramaturgy: Jeroen Versteele