Virginia Woolf’s Orlando with skates, fire and a gender-fluid journey
Janet Anderson has been getting very comfortable falling over lately. She’s one of four actors performing the title role in Belvoir’s upcoming adaptation of Orlando. For the show, the whole cast will appear as rollerskating Elizabethans, bringing to life the vivid scene of ice skating on the frozen River Thames during the Great Frost of 1608 from Virginia Woolf’s novel.
“I won’t lie, the thought of rollerskating in front of 300 people still churns my stomach a little bit,” admits Anderson, a 2022 NIDA graduate. “But everyone in the ensemble has really dived into learning the art of roller skating and we’re already looking pretty profesh. It’s like Starlight Express! I’m sure the people downstairs are frustrated with the floorboards constantly creaking with us roller skating everywhere and falling over in a heap - roller skating is not without the falling over aspect.”
Actor Janet Anderson will star in the new production of Orlando.Credit: Dylan Coker
Roller skating is just one of the surprises in store in the new theatrical adaptation, which traverses through the Elizabethan, Victorian and Restoration eras through to the present day. “It’s a very ambitious production,” Anderson says. “We’ve got lots of different fun theatrical elements, roller skating and dancing and fire and all the things that will delight audiences.”
Published in 1928, Orlando was Woolf’s literary love letter to her paramour Vita Sackville-West, with the protagonist modelled on and inspired by events in Sackville-West’s life. It’s a sprawling, funny, subversive and wildly imaginative text that travels across centuries and is perhaps most famous for its main character going to sleep as a man and waking up a week later as a woman.
For director, co-adaptor and queer theatre maker Carissa Licciardello, who’s no stranger to Woolf’s work after directing and co-adapting A Room Of One’s Own for Belvoir in 2020, Orlando still feels fresh and ripe for reinterpretation almost a century after its publication.
“The thing that struck me is the story of Orlando was quite different to what I had known from seeing other adaptations. Typically, it seems to be the story of a man who becomes a woman as they travel through time, but actually reading it, it’s really about a person who moves through many different selves and moves from man to woman to someone who’s got a much more fluid relationship with gender. That immediately felt like it was in conversation with the way we’re thinking about gender now, so that was exciting.”
One key decision was to cast four different actors in the title role, with Shannen Alyce Quan, Anderson, Zarif, and Nic Prior all playing Orlando. The more traditional casting would be to have one person for the character, as seen in Sally Potter’s 1992 film starring Tilda Swinton, Jacqueline McKenzie’s turn in 2015 for Sydney Theatre Company, and Emma Corrin in a 2022 West End stage adaptation. (Though the 2023 documentary Orlando, My Political Biography took a similar approach with multiple Orlandos.)
Director Carissa Licciardello Credit: Brett Boardman
“We wanted anybody playing the part of Orlando to be in the trans or non-binary community,” Licciardello says. “And we just met so many great actors, there were so many people we got excited about where we thought, oh, this person totally captures this aspect of Orlando. It did become a eureka moment of actually we could do that and it totally supports that central thesis, which is this person just keeps changing over and over. Every time Orlando shifts into a new self and the world shifts around them, they hand over to the next actor who’s going to pick up the baton and continue the journey.”
Anderson, who plays Orlando as a woman encountering the strict ideas about what ladies should and shouldn’t do at a Restoration-era ball, first came across Orlando not via Woolf’s novel but as a teenager on Tumblr. She spotted a still of Tilda Swinton from Potter’s cult classic film, with the lavish sets and ornate costumes proving instantly appealing. Anderson is particularly thrilled to be working in the period drama realm.
“To be a trans artist and to be able to step into the period drama world is really exciting, it’s not something I thought I’d be able to do,” Anderson says. “When they first called me to do the production, I said, I’ll do it as long as I get to wear pretty dresses because Orlando without pretty dresses is not much to sniff at, in my opinion. I can’t wait.”
While Orlando is a period piece, Licciardello is quick to point out that it jumps out of the box of what audiences might expect from the genre.
Amber McMahon, Janet Anderson, Shannen Alyce Quan, Nyx Calder, Nic Prior and Zarif in rehearsals. Credit: Brett Boardman
“We want it to be a group of queer people taking on the idea of a period play – and that doesn’t mean it’s ironic or we’re commenting on the period,” Licciardello says. “It’s more from the lens of these people have existed in history throughout history and now we’re telling this story. It’s not a highly intellectual, difficult piece of period work. Certainly there’s big ideas in there, but it’s very playful.”
Orlando arrives at Belvoir at a time when trans rights have come under attack, particularly in the United States, and when traditional gender roles are making something of a comeback (such as the rise of trad wives)
It’s a political climate that the show is hoping to provide something of an antidote to, skates and all.
“Things have shifted in quite an awful way over the last 12 months, it’s certainly a much harsher reality for trans people, particularly than when we programmed the work,” Licciardello says. “At the same time, one of the things that everyone in the team loves about Orlando is it is such a celebration of queer joy. It’s a group of people claiming playfulness and subversiveness and magic and wonder and pleasure, despite what is happening in the world. So it feels meaningful that we’re getting to explore that kind of story at a time like this, for sure.”
Orlando is at Belvoir St Theatre from August 30 to September 21.