A boy in khaki shorts, a black waistcoat, a green shirt, and long green socks is surrounded by a cast of chorus members who take turns narrating his tale. They emphasize the boy’s pronoun—“HE!”—as they do so.

“For there could be no doubt of his sex,” chorus member Estee Dechtman, BC ’22, says. Yet there is doubt of his sex, for later in the play, the boy, now 30 years old, becomes a woman. This is Orlando, Virginia Woolf’s gender-changing, time-traveling, immortal enigma, played by Maya Weed, CC ’22.

“Orlando was a woman—there is no denying it,” chorus member Isobel Obrecht, BC ’23, narrates. “But in every other respect, he remained precisely as he had been.”

From Dec. 9 to 11, the Barnard theater department presented Sarah Ruhl’s “Orlando” at the Minor Latham Playhouse as the department’s second show of the fall season. Directed by Barnard adjunct lecturer Ran Xia, the production featured a puppet hand and a paper puppet performance of Shakespeare’s “Othello.” The ensemble cast switched roles, genders, and accents in the playful adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel.

The script, adapted by Ruhl, states that the chorus “may be cast without regard to gender,” while Orlando and Sasha should be played by women. Ruhl’s gender-bending casting suggestions are at the heart of the play, as the story explores identity questioning, gender dysphoria, and self-discovery. Xia casted a diverse ensemble of six to narrate, dance, and sing alongside the production’s two senior thesis lead actors: Rivka Keshen, BC ’22, as the Russian princess Sasha, and Weed as the eponymous hero.

Orlando lives through many centuries, from Elizabethan England to the early 20th century. The costumes were designed to be flexible to fit the time-jumping nature of the play. Micaela Hecht, BC ’22, designed costumes for “Orlando” for her senior thesis. She chose a green and white palette for Orlando and the chorus’ costumes. Guided by the play’s central theme of gender questioning, Hecht played with silhouettes and androgynous looks using bare crinolines and a mix of trousers and skirts. The costumes included a noticeable blend of clothes from different eras, ranging from corsets to sweater-vests, reflecting the time-jumping narrative.

Hecht gradually introduced red, pink, and purple into the costumes as Sasha and Orlando’s shifting gender identity drove the plot forward. Sasha wore a red beanie—bedazzled with gold to resemble a crown—a tie-dye vest, maroon pants and red Converse shoes. Against the green and white palette, Sasha stood out, but almost too much, the bright reds not complementing the pastel costumes as much as the later pinks and purples did. However, her costume suggests that she is ahead of her time, especially when placed opposite Orlando as a boy in his more historical—yet not exactly 16th-century—outfit.

As the character traveled through time and changed sex, Orlando went from wearing boyish shorts, to a crinoline and pink skirt, to purple pants. Weed consistently did her costume changes on stage, incorporating the costume changes into the play’s action. However, she kept wearing her green shirt with a tied collar, as if the shirt was a part of Orlando’s attempt to steady their identity as their gender shifts.

“It is a strange fact, but a true one, that up to this moment she had scarcely given her sex a thought,” Orlando said, standing upon a boat in her new womanly fashion.

The cast gathered on the tilted upstage platform that represented the boat, with blue lighting representing the sea and a gold light on Orlando, as a woman, hinting at a new warmth in her as she returned to England. The set of “Orlando,” designed by Chrisopher and Justin Swaders, is industrial; the tilted, gray, stone wall upstage and the rolling metal stairs give the scenic design a modern look, yet the set is also accented by more antique-style pieces, such as the brown spiral staircase and a red wooden writing desk. Like the costumes, the blending of set pieces from different eras adds a timeless aesthetic to the stage.

The stage’s openness leaves room for the magic of Ruhl’s script to come to life. The narration of Orlando’s story is split evenly between the chorus and Orlando, who narrates parts of their own story in the third person, showing how Ruhl stayed true to the original Woolf text. The chorus switched roles and genders, changing their costumes aptly but subtly, and they occasionally even switched accents to further distance themselves from their states as neutral chorus narrators.

The actors are all skilled in making Woolf’s satirical story accessible to the audience. Ruhl, in her notes on “Orlando,” mentions her rules of narration: “simplicity,” “emotional statedness,” “flux,” and “non-literalness,” meaning “the gesture need not illustrate the narration precisely.” She also notes that the narration should invite the audience in rather than distance them. Xia followed Ruhl’s narration rules faithfully, especially when it came to directing the cast. The actors relayed the plot through gestures rather than just plain speech, and they used dynamic acting techniques to captivate the audience through their storytelling.

The puppetry and movement were among the most exciting parts of the play, propelling the storytelling. In the play’s opening, a large recreation of Queen Elizabeth’s hand was held by two chorus members, stroking the back of young Orlando. The puppet mirrored the hand of Queen Elizabeth, played by Surya Buddharaju, CC ’23, who stood on the rolling stairs decked in elegant white and gold, towering above Orlando, the stairs resembling a crinoline. Later, a paper puppet recreation of “Othello” was staged as Orlando and Sasha passed through a London fair. The comedy of the chorus shined here, as a red tissue is dropped, perfectly timed, onto the puppet stage to indicate puppet-Othello’s melodramatic death. The puppetry, designed by Peiyi Wong, added a whimsical touch to the production, although it was a pity it was not implemented more.

Despite the lack of puppetry, the production displayed excellent choreography and movement. The ensemble moved swiftly and gracefully as they traveled through the ages with Orlando. In one scene, using two lit-up wooden panels, they recreated an elevator. In another, using two flashlights, two members acted as Orlando’s car, standing on either side of Orlando. The production also featured musical moments––a highlight being a performance of the sea shanty “The Wellerman,” accompanied by a live accordion. One particularly beautiful moment of movement was when Orlando was abandoned by Sasha, and the chorus used a yellow sheet to match Orlando’s mood.

“Where there had once been solid ice, was now a race of turbulent yellow waters,” Orlando said as the chorus sat in a line, waving the golden sheet to recreate the waves.

The chorus then said, “All was riot and confusion. The river was strewn with icebergs,” and each member huddled up into child’s pose, and they let the sheet fall on them, their bodies standing in for the masses of ice.

This image of the turbulent sea representing Orlando’s mental state was introduced again in the final moments of the play. Thomas Baker, CC ’22, said the chorus’s last line before the ensemble left Orlando alone on stage: “Orlando’s mind began to toss like the sea.”

The lighting, designed by Elizabeth M. Stewart never failed to express the spirit of the moment, and in this moment of solitude, there was a spotlight from downstage right on Orlando, suggesting a serene state of mind as Orlando said she, as a woman, can “begin to live again.”

The lighting turned a dark blue and, holding a book, Orlando moved upstage. Facing the audience, she opened the book, which glowed like a paper lantern as the words from the ambiguous concluding line of Woolf’s novel were projected onto the wall behind Orlando. After a crescendoing of overlaid, muffled sounds, Orlando said the projected line aloud, letting it clearly ringg through the theater.

“I am about to understand…”

The play ends on an obscure yet hopeful note, inviting audience members to interpret Orlando’s journey of self-exploration for themselves.