In her directorial debut
ORLANDO: A Rhapsody, Paris-based theater artist Vinora Epp talks about growing up in a theater, and the wonder and joy that brought to her childhood. The theater that she speaks of is one that's familiar to many in #TCTheater - Tony-winning Theatre de la Jeune Lune, which sadly closed its doors in 2008 just two years before I started this blog. Vinora saw her father Steven Epp, now Co-Artistic Director of The Moving Company, play Hamlet when she was seven years old, and was so taken by it that she wanted to play Hamlet too, unfazed by the fact that she's a girl and typically girls don't get to play Hamlet. Thus began a lifelong exploration of gender and storytelling, culminating in this piece that she co-wrote and performs with her father. Combining the writing of Virginia Woolf, Shakespeare, and personal stories, the daughter-father duo weaves a compelling and fluid narrative.
ORLANDO: A Rhapsody performs at The Southern Theater on off days (typically Sunday through Tuesday) of
The Moving Company's lovely original piece at low tide (performing Wednesday through Sunday). There are a couple of days with performances of both shows, which would make a nice double feature.
Sarah Ruhl wrote a play based on
Virginia Woolf's 1928 novel Orlando: A Biography, about a poet who changes gender from man to woman and lives for hundreds of years, which
Theatre Pro Rata did an excellent production of a few years ago. That same novel is a jumping off point for this piece, but it is far from a straight-forward adaptation. It's really more of a conversation between father and daughter, between man and woman, between two different generations, between two artists. Through it, we learn a little bit more about each of them, as they both embody Orlando - Vinora the young Orlando, Steven the old Orlando (even though the Orlando of the novel never gets old). They weave in bits of Shakespeare and other writings, as well as their own ruminations on gender and the nature of storytelling. The result is something really quite mesmerizing and thought-provoking.
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| Vinora and Steven Epp (photo by Arin Sang-Ura) |
This piece performs on the set of
at low tide, the sparse whiteness of it functioning as a blank canvas. The additional set pieces for
Orlando includes couple of tables and chairs, some food props, a mirror that functions as a river when laid down on the floor, and a curtain painted with a scenic view. There are no fancy effects, just a song or two played at specific moments (and one haunting a capella duet), lighting that subtly goes from full lights to something softer, and a water element, which seems to run in the Epp family (musical arrangement by Bruno de Labriolle, lighting design Marcus Dilliard).
I love seeing the next generation of theater artists in this theater rich town, so I'm glad that the Epp family brought this piece, that premiered in NYC last year, home to Minneapolis. It's fun to watch them perform together, and observe their similarities and differences. The theme of this thoughtfully constructed 70-minute piece is best summarized by Vinora's comments about Virginia Woolf in the program: "she exposed a myth I’d grown up with: that gender had no impact on the stories we could tell." It's an idea that ORLANDO: A Rhapsody explores in a fascinating and insightful way.
