Berwick Literary Festival: Orlando - A Pre-Production Talk

Michael Ayton teaches at Newcastle Explore. Prior to the Dyad Theatre Company’s Orlando, he’ll discuss how Virginia Woolf came to write this most unclassifiable of books and outline the controversies surrounding it, looking at its style, presentation of history and ‘other’ cultures, and its connection with present-day feminism and gender politics.

Orlando: A Biography is a novel by Virginia Woolf, first published on 11th October 1928. A high-spirited romp inspired by the tumultuous family history of Woolf's lover and close friend the aristocratic poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West, it is arguably one of Woolf's most popular novels: a history of English literature in satiric form. The book describes the adventures of a poet who changes sex from man to woman and lives for centuries, meeting the key figures of English literary history. Considered a feminist classic, the book has been written about extensively by scholars of women's writing and gender and transgender studies.