By Virginia Woolf Adapted and written by Gabriel Calderón and Marta Pazos Directed by Marta Pazos
25 APR – 8 JUN 2025 Tuesday to Sunday at 20:00 | Matinée: Tuesday 13 MAY at 12:00 Accessible performances: 8 and 9 MAY 2025
Meeting with the artistic team: 6 MAY 2025
Virginia Woolf
Gabriel Calderón and Marta Pazos
Marta Pazos
Nao Albet, Alessandra García, Natalia Huarte, Jorge Kent, Laia Manzanares, María Morales, Paco Ochoa, Mabel Olea, José Juan Rodríguez and Alberto Velasco
Blanca Añón
Neo Meira
Agustín Petronio
Hugo Torres
Fani Bello and Noé Montes
Centro Dramático Nacional
About the show
Orlando is a passionate young English aristocrat from the 16th century in search of love and adventure. During a dance at the court of Queen Elizabeth I, Orlando attracts the monarch’s attention and becomes her protégé. The young man goes on a journey through the centuries, experiencing the cultural and social changes of each age. He falls tragically in love with a Russian princess during the reign of James I, he will be the ambassador of the court of Charles II in Constantinople, he will love men and women in the 18th century, write poetry in Victorian Great Britain, marry and end up in the roaring 1920s.
Despite living for more than 300 years, outwardly, Orlando only seems 36.
But the idea of time is not the only transgression in this story. One day, Orlando goes to bed and the next morning wakes up magically transformed into a woman.
The contrast between the infinite possibilities that Orlando has before his transition and the few options that are later available highlight the oppression that comes with traditional gender roles.
Virginia Woolf, a key figure of international feminism and one of the brightest and most revolutionary minds of the 20th century, wrote this refined parody of the biographical genre and brutal satire of sexism in 1928, whose protagonist becomes one of the most iconic and dazzling characters of fiction and literature.
Note from the author and director
I am interested in the body as a political territory.
I imagine the stage of this play as a metaphor for the body.
A unique place that is being revealed through space, and transforming in time. The play spans over 300 years.
The body as a castle, the body as a garden, the body as a labyrinth, the body as an oak, the body as a theatre.
Orlando knows the body because it is the first protagonist to change gender halfway through this story. Orlando knows of stories because he loves literature.
Orlando only ages until he’s 36, and he lives over 300 years to have a good perspective.
It’s impossible not to fall in love with Orlando.
It’s impossible not to fall in love with Woolf.
Marta Pazos
Virginia Woolf
Gabriel Calderón and Marta Pazos
Marta Pazos
Nao Albet, Alessandra García, Natalia Huarte, Jorge Kent, Laia Manzanares, María Morales, Paco Ochoa, Mabel Olea, José Juan Rodríguez and Alberto Velasco
Blanca Añón
Neo Meira
Agustín Petronio
Hugo Torres
Fani Bello and Noé Montes
Centro Dramático Nacional
Artistic director, stage and opera director, stage designer, playwright, and visual artist, Marta Pazos is one of the most influential artists on the cutting edge of today’s European stage scene.
She has a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona, and her work is known for its artistic dimension and aesthetic emancipation. Her productions feature radical colours that grab the audience’s eye and transform its perception.
Since 2000, she has directed theatre and opera for entities such as the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Centro Dramático Nacional, Teatro Real, Teatro Español, Teatre Lliure, Teatro de La Abadía, Centro Dramático Galego and Comedia Nacional in Uruguay. She has successfully staged plays by Federico García Lorca, Shakespeare, Valle-Inclán, Ionesco and contemporary Latin American, Spanish and Portuguese playwrights.
She was the founder and artistic director of the (2000-2005) and Voadora (2007-2022) companies.
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Her productions include the world premiere of the opera Alexina B by Raquel García Tomás, about the biography of the intersex icon Herculine Barbin, the world premiere of the award-winning opera Je suis narcissiste by Tomás García, both finalists at the International Opera Awards (2020 and 2023) as the best world premiere; versions of Shakespeare’s Othello told through the female characters, A Midsummer Night’s Dream with a transgender theme, and The tempest; versions of El Público, Comedia sin Térmica and Viaje a la Luna by Federico García Lorca; Garage, a work on the role of women in the automotive industry, starring workers from Peugeot-Citröen, and Dique, a dance show about the women stevedores in the shipyards of 19th-century Ferrol. Her visual works have been shown at the Prague Quadrennial PQ23 National Gallery, ARCO Madrid 24, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea and the Museo do Gaiás.
She has received the Award of Honour for Merit in the Performing Arts from MIT Ribadavia, the Dorothea Bárcenas Award of Honour 2018 and four María Casares Theatre Awards for stage director and stage designer.
She has held conferences, master classes and seminars in prestigious American, African and European centres such as the Prado Museum in Madrid, the August Festival in Maputo, the Institut del Teatre de Barcelona and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
She designs her projects in her studio in Santiago de Compostela, where she resides.
