Day 1: Rehearsing Orlando and the pleasures of gender

by Judith Jerome

Tiresias, the Greek seer who, among other things, foretold Oedipus’ troubles, gained hard-won wisdom from the gods in several ways: he was blinded, and thus became a seer; his ears were reamed out in compensation, such that he understood the song language of the birds; and his sex was changed from man to woman and back again—giving him particular understanding of the pleasures of gender. Surely Virginia Woolf had the story tucked somewhere in her mind when she wrote Orlando: A Biography.

What an extravagant love song it was! And Sarah Ruhl’s stage adaptation condenses, distills the song, retaining Woolf’s language, but creating another kind of melody, quick and funny and something else I haven’t got words for yet. In the first read-through the actors read round-robin, each taking only a single line. Director Natalya Baldyga quipped that it would keep them on their toes—it also created a kind of ensemble, group reality to the story that seemed fitting to me. It is us. In the happy gender elastic world we live in it is us, and in the pleasure of that round-robin moment I wanted the play to always be done like that.

Woolf’s love song was written to her lover and friend Vita Sackville-West, and it is sexy! Certainly in the mouths of this fine group of actors, and through Ruhl’s distillation. I adore Woolf but tend to think of her as a sort of gorgeous heady, asexual creature, at least in part because she was a troubled “person to whom things happen,” as she wrote (and Parul Seghal recently reminded us in the NYT Magazine http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/the-forced-heroism-of-the-survivor.html?_r=0). Be not prepared for headiness here, my friends! 

Director Natalya Baldyga liking what she hears. And Per Janson, back again!

Back, too, Jason Martin (The Last Ferryman), plus stage manager, Lindy Lofton, Natalya, and the backs and sides of other actors you will meet, Barry, Liz, and Jade.