Orlando. Virginia Woolf
Paris: Odéon Théâtre de L'Europe, 1993. Quarto, publisher's stapled stiff photo-illustrated wraps.
"I was alone." Original program for experimental stage director and designer Robert Wilson’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s modernist queer classic performed at the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe in the fall of 1993 with Isabelle Huppert in the title role. Adapted by novelist Darryl Pickney, the production elegantly condenses Woolf’s novel, which takes place over the course of 300 years, into a three-part dramatic monologue. The first of numerous collaborations between the director and leading actress (she later starred in Wilson’s Mary Said What She Said and Quartett), the play and particularly Huppert’s mannered and mesmerizing performance garnered overwhelming critical praise. An infrequent stage actress, Huppert was convinced by Wilson to take the leading role in the French version (it was also performed in German, English, and Chinese) after they met in 1991 at a dinner hosted by mutual friends. In 1994, director Benoît Rossel directed a documentary tracing how the director and actress met and worked together, ending with footage of the opening night’s performance. Text by theater critic and academic Jean-Michel Déprats and selections from Woolf's journals and letters to Vita Sackville-West, her main inspiration for the novel; with brief biographies and bibliographies of Wilson and Woolf. Illustrated with color and black-and-white photos of Huppert and the production. Text in French. Some soiling to wraps. Near fine. Item #5102
$150.00