This production is dedicated to the memory of Rachel Anne Lisi.

Jobsite Theater proudly offers the southeastern United States premiere of Pulitzer and Tony Award nominated playwright and MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship recipient Sarah Ruhl’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando.

One of American theater’s most exciting young playwrights, Sarah Ruhl adapts Virginia Woolf’s quasi-autobiographical gender-bending novel about sex, love, and history into a joyous, dreamy piece of theater that toys with identity, time and space.

Often called the longest love letter in literary history, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando tells the story of an English nobleman and favorite of the Queen who lives for hundreds of years before falling asleep and waking up as a woman. In her new body, Orlando sets to the task of adapting to the strict gender roles of English society. Complicating Orlando’s new life is one fantastical problem: she is destined to live for hundreds more years. She survives the 19th and 20th centuries grappling with what it means to live fully in the present, in our own skin, and in our own time.

Jobsite has previously staged Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone. Virginia Woolf’s Orlando displays Jobsite’s ongoing commitment to contemporary translations, approaches, and adaptations of classic works. The company has previously undertaken staged literature as varied in style and substance as The Hound of the Baskervilles, Fahrenheit 451 and Einstein’s Dreams.

Virginia Woolf’s Orlando is under the direction of Giles Davies, whom Jobsite audiences should be very familiar with as an actor from his roles in Twelfth Night, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Macbeth, Fahrenheit 451 and Quills. This is his first mainstage production as director for the company, having previously directed the stunning side-project 4.48 Psychosis, the Best of the Bay award winning production also named one of the Top 9 performances of 2013.