Graduating class performances

ABOUT ORLANDO

After tackling Montreal’s underground art scene in Total Liquidation, the 2016 Graduating Class of the National Theatre School of Canada gives the measure of its range by presenting Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, adapted by Sarah Ruhl, from December 8 to 12, 2015, at the Ludger-Duvernay Theatre of the Monument-National. For the very first time in Canada, director Eda Holmes (Directing, 1996) brings to the stage the iconic character of a young nobleman who magically transforms into an immortal woman. Orlando weaves together love, sexuality, gender identity, and imagination with such intelligence and whimsy that one can only be charmed by this improbable 600 year journey towards self-fulfillment.

Orlando starts his life as an attractive Elizabethan teenager, adored by all (especially the Queen!). But he breaks from society to pursue his heart... and lust all the way to 17th-century Constantinople. There, he falls asleep one night, exhausted from a party, only to wake up… as a woman! A woman who finds herself, much to her chagrin, under the care of men, often with little more opportunity than to get married; but Orlando only longs to love freely and become a better poet.

“Orlando is an androgynous creature faced with multiple possibilities; he/she can ponder what the world is like from both sides of the gender question. She needs to figure out for herself who she really is. ‛I am alone’ is a recurring phrase in the play and it takes on different meanings as the character evolves through the centuries,” explains director Eda Holmes, who chose to eschew heavy sets and costumes, instead challenging the designers and actors to the subtle art of metamorphosis.

“The play delves into history with an ample world view. In her novel, Virginia Woolf filters the past through her very acute sense of the present (and perhaps even the future!). She asks: is our sense of self indivisible from the context in which we find ourselves? And what is the role that art and creativity play in the discovery of self?” adds Alisa Palmer, Artistic Director of the English section of NTS.