ORLANDO: A Rhapsody

ORLANDO: A Rhapsody started as an adaptation of a novel, conceived and performed by two actors, Vinora Epp and Steven Epp. They happen to be father and daughter. The daughter is at the helm of the project, and this is her directorial debut. They began a written adaptation in 2021, working long-distance: Vinora lives in Paris, and Steven in Minneapolis and Brooklyn. Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf is a satirical, fantastical, political novel which 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; then 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 is borne from two actors who are confronting all of these themes as father and daughter.