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Orlando

By VIRGINIA WOOLF
Direction Katie Mitchell In a version of Alice Birch
©Stephen Cummiskey/Schaubühne
Past event
Dates and Schedules

6 and 7 April
Thursday and Friday, 20h

Venue

Sala Luis Miguel Cintra

Duration

1h40

Price

€10 to €15 with discounts

Age Restriction

16+

Accessibility

In German, with Portuguese subtitles

Description

A heroine who is born a hero; or a hero who becomes a heroine – does it even matter? Orlando experiences four centuries of British and European human history. He lives at the court of Elizabeth I; falls tragically in love with a Russian princess at the fabled banquet on the frozen River Thames during the reign of James I; dabbles in writing; becomes Charles II’s ambassador to Constantinople. He returns to Great Britain a woman, writes, throws parties in the enlightened 18th century, loves men and women, both prostitutes and nobles and, in the buttoned-up Victorian era, marries a man. Man or woman, does Orlando even have to decide? Orlando witnesses how people, nature, systems and reigns are in a constant state of flux; and how customs, habits and ideas of how a man or a woman should behave are constantly being modified, as well as what is right and what is wrong, what an artist should write about and what a woman is allowed to think about. Orlando experiences how the weather and the political climate change, how desire and gender roles develop. Orlando sees people who take for nature what is actually man-made.

In her biography of Orlando, Virginia Woolf describes a life that undermines every rigid category with ease and artistic freedom, imbuing them with new meaning or presenting them as fluid. She playfully interweaves life and art, reality and fiction into a visionary work and creates one of literary history’s most dazzling heroines whose overabundance of identities leapfrogs any narrow definition or rigid categorisation.

In a production combining performance on stage with live video, Katie Mitchell and Alice Birch explore Orlando’s queer journey through various centuries of the patriarchal history of humankind.

 

The show has explicit depiction of sexual acts.

Premiere: 5 September 2019

 

 

 

 

 

With the support  Logotipo PROSPERO Logotipo Goethe Institute

Cast and Creative

Direction Katie Mitchell Co-Direction Lily McLeish Set Design Alex Eales Costume Design Sussie Juhlin-Wallen Video Director Grant Gee Video Ingi Bekk Collaboration Video Ellie Thompson Music and Sound Design Melanie Wilson Dramaturgy Nils Haarmann Translated from English by Brigitte Walitzek Lighting Design Anthony Doran With İlknur Bahadır, Philip Dechamps, Cathlen Gawlich, Carolin Haupt, Jenny König, Isabelle Redfern, Alessa Schmitz, Konrad Singer Camera Andreas Hartmann / Nadja Krüger / Sebastian Pircher / Christin Wilke Boom Operator Stefan Kessissoglou Support Friends of Schaubühne Berlin /// In cooperation with the European theater network PROSPERO Co-production Schaubühne Berlin with Odéon – Théâtre de l’Europe, Teatros del Canal, Göteborgs Stadsteater/Backa Teater and São Luiz Teatro Municipal

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