Orlando

“Orlando is a true collaboration in that it incorporates a Western vocabulary of movement and images, based on Virginia Woolf’s text of Orlando and deriving from my background as an architect, from my life in the theater, and from my work as a visual artist.
“This work is counter-pointed and complemented by the classically trained Beijing opera star Wei Hai-min (魏海敏), which definitely brings an ancient sense of Chinese culture to the work — a culture where movement, language, the difference between spoken and sung words, are all very different from what I’ve inherited from my Western roots.
“I see this work as being one whole made of two opposites — the way you have two hands but one body, two sides of the brain, but one mind.
“This new Taipei production is based on earlier ones I did in Paris with Isabelle Huppert and in England with Miranda Richardson. The text and music are different, however, as well as the movement, because they are adapted to the talents of the great Wei Hai-min.
“As for the music, it will use traditional Chinese instruments and at times very profound contemporary electronic sounds.” ----Robert Wilson