Orlando

In the organizer's words:

"Orlando" was born in a flash of inspiration, according to Virginia Woolf, feeling liberated after laborious journalistic work. Her idea: a biography that begins around 1600 and continues to the present day. Orlando does not age, transforms from a man into a woman, lives up to the present moment.

In a short space of time, Woolf writes a work of the century with wonderfully experimental relationships, a celebration of the other and of love, beyond the narrow boundaries of the self and its fixation on identity and gender. Orlando is a fluid creature in constant metamorphosis, whose transformation by no means ends when she becomes a woman. In her new body, she experiences the change of eras, fashions, morals, ways of thinking and other changes.

"Orlando. A Biography", as the author calls her book, is written, lived and felt with an exuberant fearlessness and unreserved affirmation of life. Convinced of the power of art and the miracle of writing, Virginia Woolf digs her way through the invention of a life story that ultimately spans four hundred years. In the process, "Orlando. A Biography" is not least a super-intelligent, unaggressive mockery of social rules and laws, conventions and automatisms. Literature, too, in its brittleness and morality, becomes the target of Woolf's lusty criticism. The novel puts into practice the decision to allow oneself everything and undertakes the large-scale and unprotected attempt to combine art and life. Alongside emotion, there is always the intoxication of reflection and thought.

The multi-award-winning director Jossi Wieler is directing the play for the first time in 25 years at the Deutsches SchauSpielHaus. In 1994, he was voted Director of the Year for his production of Elfriede Jelinek's "Wolken.Heim." in the MalerSaal. His plays have been invited to international festivals, and in Tokyo he directed with Japanese theater ensembles. In 2002 he received the "Konrad Wolf Prize" from the Berlin Academy of the Arts, in 2005 the "German Critics' Prize" and in 2009 the NESTROY Prize.