Father/Daughter Duo Team Up To Present The World Premiere Of ORLANDO: A Rhapsody At The Tank

Paris-based artist Vinora Epp will make her directorial debut in the new two-hander play ORLANDO: A Rhapsody. Inspired by Virginia Woolf's novel "Orlando: A Biography," the play was created by Vinora and her father Steven Epp who used Woolf's novel as a jumping off point. The duo will also co-star in the production. The limited run will play April 17 - 24 at The Tank in New York City. Opening night is slated for April 17.

Vinora and Steven started writing the adaptation of ORLANDO: A Rhapsody during the pandemic in 2021. They worked long-distance as Vinora lives in Paris, and Steven splits his time between Minneapolis and Brooklyn. Vinora grew up in and around the Theatre de la Jeune Lune (winner of the 2005 Tony award for Best Regional Theatre) in Minneapolis and has been creating and working in Paris and internationally for over the past decade. Steven, a well-known regional theatre actor and former Co-Artistic Director of Theatre de la Jeune Lune, introduced his daughter to the arts at a young age. This project marks their first collaboration.

Vinora shared her thoughts on creating the play and working with her father, "When I started my acting career, I thought it would be exciting to do something with my father in Minneapolis. I wanted to do something in the States and I wanted to revisit the artistic world I had grown up in. In parallel, I had this fascination for Virginia Woolf; I wanted to transcribe her world to the stage, and I knew that the esthetic dialogue between her, myself, and my father could be fertile ground to work on".

She went on to say, "The novel Orlando: A Biography does not obey the rules of logical, realistic fiction: Orlando lives 300 years and moves from one gender to another. So, the book leaves complete freedom to those who are adapting and interpreting it. That is why I was drawn to it- I knew we could do whatever we wanted. I thought that taking this story, and mixing in a lot of feminist philosophy, as well as performing it with my father, would make for a very exciting, complex, and challenging project".

ABOUT ORLANDO: A Rhapsody

"Orlando: A Biography" by Virginia Woolf is a satirical, fantastical, political novel which follows the life of a hero/ine who lives 300 years and moves from one gender to another. In ORLANDO: A Rhapsody, father and daughter play the same character at different ages of their life. But ORLANDO: A Rhapsody soon takes on a life of its own, far beyond the original novel: weaving in material from Woolf's body of work: "The Waves" and "A Room of One's Own"; while also incorporating Shakespeare; feminist philosophy; music; movement; autobiography.

ORLANDO: A Rhapsody is a duet performance that layers questions of fiction, age, filiality, death, but most of all, gender. It places gender onstage as theatrical material to wrestle with, in all of its violence and all of its poetry. It is a highly intimate and political form whose strength and specificity are borne from two actors who are confronting all of these themes as father and daughter.

Content Warning: Talk of depression, anxiety, suicide, and psychiatric hospitalization.

Performances take place at The Tank, 312 West 36th Street (btw 8th Ave & 9th Ave), 4th Floor, New York, NY 10018. Tickets are available on a sliding scale from $20 to $40 and are available at www.thetanknyc.org/calendar-1/2024/4/17/orlando-a-rhapsody.

Performances run Wednesday, April 17 and Thursday, April 18 at 9:30pm, Friday, April 19 at 7pm, Saturday, April 20 at 7pm, Tuesday, April 23 at 7pm, Wednesday, April 24 at 7pm. Running time: 70 min.

BIOGRAPHIES

Vinora Epp (Director/Author/Performer) grew up in and around the Theatre de la Jeune Lune in Minneapolis. At age 18, she moved to France to study acting where she currently resides. She received training at l'Ecole de la Comédie de Saint-Etienne, a top-tier national theater school. Since graduation in 2018, she has had the opportunity to freelance in a variety of companies and locations : in national theaters in Brussels, Berlin, Lausanne, Vienna, and in national, regional, and underground theaters all across France. In five years of professional experience, her acting work spans from reinterpreting classics, to adapting literary works to the stage, to contemporary plays, to devised/collective writing. In parallel to her work in theater, she has shot several short films with young directors. She is an active member of Collectif Féministes Revolutionnaires, as well as polyphony vocal ensemble La Schola Saint-Bruno.

Steven Epp (Author/Performer) is an actor and playwright based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Brooklyn, New York. He was the co-Artistic Director of Theatre de la Jeune Lune, winner of the 2005 Tony award for Best Regional Theatre. In his 25 years with Jeune Lune, Steven collaborated on the creation and performance of over 50 productions. He has been widely seen throughout the United States, playing lead roles in everything from Hamlet, The Miser, Tartuffe, Figaro, and The Servant of Two Masters to Fiddler on the Roof, Treasure Island, and The Lorax. With Christopher Bayes he adapted The Servant of Two Masters; A Doctor In Spite of Himself; Accidental Death of an Anarchist; and Ruzante, based on the plays of Angelo Beolco. Steven is currently the co-Artistic Director of The Moving Company, in Minneapolis, where he is the collaborator, author and performer of numerous devised productions.

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