Orlando, An Opera in Five Hundred Years.
ACT II
WAKING
ORLANDO, now a woman, wakes up alone.
ORLANDO: Whose limbs are these? So graceful and soft.
Whose body is this, this changing, feeling garment of flesh?
It must be me, it must be mine
Whose voice do I hear?
It speaks my thoughts, it must be mine.
Is this my hand? It writes like I do. It must be mine.
VIRGINIA: Their faces remained identical, as their portraits prove.
And his memory-- but the future we must, for convention’s sake, say ‘her’ for ‘his’ and ‘she for ‘he’—her memory was fully intact.
ORLANDO: Yet something is different.
I’m the same, and I’m not.
My skin seems darker, my heart beats faster.
Perhaps I have gypsy blood in my veins?
What will become of me now?
VIRGINIA: Orlando, come to England. Meet me there in two hundred years!
THE SHIP TO ENGLAND Orlando is on the deck of a ship. A crewman watches her from high up the mast, while the captain caters to her every whim.
ORLANDO: How clumsy these skirts are! Dragging at one’s heels.
But how well this color suits my delicate skin, this shade of green-
CAPTAIN: Take care, milady.
Such delicate skin…should be sheltered… from the sun and wind.
Would Madame like some shade? (Waits.)
Does Madame need a hand?
Would Madame like protection? From an admiring man?
ORLANDO: Skirts catch the wind, catch the light
Catch the eye …of a man close by.
Once I brushed such silken skirts aside
Now I hold them hold them still, hold them down.
And what if I simply let them fly?
Fly in the wind!
But … the wind blows…a little harder and stronger?
…fills it up like a sail…?
Perhaps I’ll fly, fly high in the wind.
Or perhaps I’ll fall, down/headlong into the sea…
Skirts will catch the water
Pull me down, drag me under
“Save me, pull me up, pull me in”…I’ll cry… (they’ll run to my rescue!)
But no…for what kind of woman does this?
Jumps into the sea and hopes to be saved!
If those are the rules, I just won’t play…
No, let them fly! [Wind blows, skirts fly up].
[The sailor watching her is captivated, loses his grip, falls.]
Just look how the sight of a leg
Catches his eye.
He loses his head, loses his grip/footing.
Look, how the sight of a leg
Brings a man tumbling down…
Straight into the sea.
Why not let skirts go flying up, and let men come tumbling down?
Men..what fools! And women too!
VIRGINIA: She became aware of the strengths and the weaknesses of each.
As a man, she looks the world in the face! Hands free ready to draw the sword!
As a woman, she turns and smiles, her hands holding her satins in place.
ORLANDO:
But now…I’ll never be able to crack a man on the head, or curse, or lead an army . . .
Instead I’ll have to pour out tea and ask my lords how they like it.
Won’t that be splendid! Wonderul. What kind of a life will I have now?
And what kind of love?
Sasha. Pepita.
I’ve always loved women.
And still I love women. Even more than before.
VIRGINIA: And you will love so very many of them, too, won’t you?
You’ll arranged all your lovers on a ladder….
But the top rung of the ladder….that will always be mine!
CAPTAIN: Madame…the Cliffs of England! St Paul’s; the Tower of London.
ORLANDO: The city, utterly changed! Yet somehow the same…
CAPTAIN: Westminster abbey. Houses of Parliament.
ORLANDO: There stood the queen. There, we danced on the ice. And here I first kissed Sasha’s hand…Mustn’t weep, it isn’t manly.
AT THE BORDER
Disembarking on shore, Orlando is stopped by a border official.
OFFICER: Papers?
ORLANDO: All burned to a crisp, I’m afraid.
OFFICER: Name?
ORLANDO: Orlando.
OFFICER: Date of birth?
ORLANDO: A couple of centuries back. 1653. To be exact.
OFFICER: Age?
ORLANDO: Put me down as thirty-something.
OFFICER: Address in England?
ORLANDO: My family has owned Northumbria, since time immemorial.
OFFICER: Profession?
ORLANDO: Aspiring poet, former ambassador. Occasional duke.
OFFICER: No profession.
ORLANDO: I’m Orlando! Kindly do let me pass.
OFFICER: Any relation to Lord Orlando?
ORLANDO: Quite closely related. I am him; he is me.
OFFICER: How can that be? You’re clearly a she. Who are you? Where is he?
ORLANDO: I was he, now I'm she.
OFFICER: Not an option! It’s one or the other. The law is clear: one sex per person.
ORLANDO: (dreamily) : Do our clothes shape us? Or do we shape them?
We say we change our clothes…
It’s not true! The clothes go on being male or female, out of habit.
While we shift and change below.
And it that’s true of the clothes?
What of this? This changing feeling garment of flesh
That we wear always and ever.
OFFICER: Let’s start again. The law is clear: one sex per person.
ORLANDO: What kind of person …is so simple as that? Only one sex?
In each of us there’s always a little of the other.
a mixture of both.
I drink like a sailor, can’t resist gambling, and I live for the hunt.
But I rescue stray kittens, have no love of war, and I’m perplexed by machines. Which would you call me? Lady or Lord?
OFFICER: How should I know? I never saw such a case.
Your lands and titles are confiscated, until we fiture this out.
Enter incognito. Or incognita, as it may prove to be.
Stage: Various couples (male and female) emerge, all wanting to cross the border and enter England.
OFFICER (to Orlando) Want my advice? A lady should marry!
That’s how it’s done. [He allows the traditional couples to pass, and welcomes them in.]
ORLANDO: I can hardly move anymore. Couples everywhere one looks!
CUSTOMS: Bound together with metal rings.
You two may pass. (to another) Enjoy your stay. (to another) Welcome back.
ORLANDO: Everyone’s already mated or dead.
Is there no other way?
OFFICER/COUPLE: Married at 19, with nineteen children on the way.
OFFICER: Thus does the empire come into being.
You two may pass.
ORLANDO: What a world we live in, nowadays. What a world to be sure!
OFFICER: Just find a man and tie the knot.
Or be someone’s governess. Be someone’s whore!
And quickly! From the looks of it, you’ve no time to spare.
ORLANDO: But why can’t a lady just walk through life alone?
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
VIRGINIA: -Great clouds began to gather over the land. All was darkness; all was doubt; all was confusion.
Men felt the chill in their hearts, the damp in their minds. The sexes grew further apart, and no open conversation was tolerated.
Rugs covered the floors; curtains blocked the windows. Beards were run. Nothing was left bare.
Rain and dampness crept into every house, swelling the wood, rotting the stone. Ivy and evergreen spread like a riot. Nature ran rampant, breeding and seething. Fertility continued unchecked…in the henhouse, the garden, the bedroom. Thus did the British empire come into being.
The Eighteenth century was over; the Nineteenth century had begun.
ORLANDO: I shall ignore them all, and live as I like.
But this creeping damp…swells even my prose!
Thirty five pages, all l about nothing. Insipid, inflated. This won’t do at all.
VIRGINIA: Orlando … the spirit of the age is against you. There’s nothing to do but submit. Get a ring on your finger.
ORLANDO: Fie on your customs! I’ll run with the hounds,
sleep on the moor, I’ll be nature’s bride.
But these skirts drag me down. Collect litter and leaves.
Heavens! I’m stuck!
SHELMARDINE
SHELMARDINE: Madame? You’re hurt!
ORLANDO: Some say I am dead...
SHELMARDINE: Shall I arrange a funeral then? Or would you like a wedding instead!?
ORLANDO: A wedding!?
SHELMARDINE: Do you mean you accept?
ORLANDO: I do! I do! For I am just a little stuck, here. To whom do I have the honor?
SHELMARDINE: Shelmardine Bonthrop Marmaduke. The third.
ORLANDO: Shelmardine! I knew it, when I saw you.
There’s something romantic, chivalrous, passionate, melancholy…yet determined about your name.
Mine is Orlando.
SHELMARDINE: Like a ship in full sail, glowing pink in the setting sun.
ORLANDO: You talk like sailor.
SHELMARDINE: I do, for I am! When a fellow’s castle falls into ruin, what choice is left, but...
ORLANDO/SHELMARDINE: to become a sailor!
ORLANDO: And if a fellow is thwarted in love and in art…what choice does he have…
ORLANDO/SHELMARDINE: but to go to Constantinople!
(Both) Finally someone who understands me!
Wait, that must mean…
ORLANDO: Shel…are you a woman?
SHELMARDINE: Orlando, are you a man?
ORLANDO/SHELMARDINE: We must never, ever be parted!
SHELMARDINE: There’s just this one thing I should tell you.
When the winds shift, I must return to my ship, to my solitude on the unfathomable seas.
ORLANDO (simultaneously): But there’s something I should tell you.
I was in the middle of writing a tribute to eternity; you’ve interrupted me; I must get back to it soon!
VIRGINIA: A clap of thunder. A flash of light. And a ring was passed from hand to hand.
By finding a man on the moor and taking him for her husband, Orlando had finally passed the inspection of the spirit of the age.
She was no longer opposed to it, but no longer of it…
Finally she could live as herself, and none other, and write.
Stage: Orlando sits to write in the setting sun. Shelmardine leaves.
LIFE IS ONE THING, BUT LITERATURE ANOTHER
VIRGINIA: I can’t tell a story of a woman who just sits and stares out the window.
A beauty, in the prime of life. With a new husband who’s away for months at a time.
Since she is a beauty, in the prime of life, won’t she do something?
Perhaps begin to think of a lover! The gardener perhaps?
[Orlando remains focused and keeps writing.]
And she will write the gardener a little note …and they’ll plan to meet at Sunday dusk …
And the lover will come whistle under the window --
…they’ll plan to meet at Sunday dusk …and talk about poetry…
Orlando, Throw him over, your man, your husband, and come. We’ll dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine….
And I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head…millions, myriads.
ORLANDO(OVERJOYED): It’s done, my poem is done! It has only taken four hundred years….
VIRGINIA (picking up the poem, and reading from it): “Orlando: A Life”
Life? Literature? One to be made into the other? But how monstrously difficult!
“ Chapter one: He — for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it…was in the act of slicing at a head which swung from the oak tree…
BELLS indicate shift to PRESENT time.
Stage: Virginia is now the one writing.
VIRGINIA: Today I dipped my pen in the ink, and wrote on a clean sheet: Orlando: a biography. At once my body was flooded with rapture, and my brain with ideas. It’s all about you.
The lust of your flesh and the lure of your mind. Heart, you have none!
I will capture you, body and soul…
(writes) “a candid sullen face”
“…eyes like drenched violets’…”moods that changed with the light”
But how can a biographer round up possible selves
with only an old goose quill and ink?
One does well to account for 6 or 7 selves…but a person may well have as many thousand.
on board a ship; captains and gold lace.
. You at the embassy…your glamour, a weakness of mine…
(pause)
Did you feel a kind of tug, as if your neck was being broken? That was when your story came to an end. .It’s all over the place, incoherent, intolerable, impossible…
Do you exist or did I make you up?
ORLANDO (coming alive and seeing Virginia for the first time):
Virginia, my creator…I’m alive and adoring
Dazzled and enchanted.
It’s the loveliest wisest richest book.
You’ve brought me to life.
It’s a deep and clear crystal in which I see myself.
I’m bewitched by your genius.
I’ve fallen in love-
VIRGINIA: Stay with me, always! Love me, always!
ORLANDO: I’ve fallen in love ..
with Orlando… with being Orlando!
I want nine more lives and nine planets to explore!
THE FUTURE
Stage: ORLANDO enters the future while VIRGINIA remains trapped in the past.
ORLANDO: Oh, Virginia. In the future, everything gets faster and faster.
Men fly through the air. The sky is bright all night long.
VIRGINIA: Damn you, adventuress! To vanish and leave me behind!
i feel torn in a thousand pieces. How shall I get on without you?
Go on loving me, don’t forget.
ORLANDO: Oh, Virginia. In the future, everything get faster and faster. Men fly through the air. The sky is bright all night long.
VIRGINIA: It grows harder to picture you clearly. You come into my presence simply and solely through words.
ORLANDO: I hear voices from all over the world. Messages fly at the speed of light.
VIRGINIA: I can almost see you: you are pink with pearls, lustrous, candle lit…
(In fact, ORLANDO is dressed entirely the opposite, in futuristic clothes or an astronaut’s suit)
VIRGINIA: Where are you now? I got a postcard from nowhere. Heartless.
I want to sink into your arms, feel the festival and firelight, while frozen rose petals fall all around us.
ORLANDO: Oh, Virginia, I want nine lives and nine planets to explore.
VIRGINIA: There's your empty chair. Flowers in your vase. I miss you each moment.
You only exist in words for me now. … I’m re-reading Orlando.
ORLANDO: Darling you're my anchor…
my anchor entangled in gold nuggets at the bottom of the sea.
VIRGINIA: What are you doing at this very moment? I can hardly imagine. Where are you?
ORLANDO: I’m on the other side of the world.
But that’s no reason love why should fade, is it?
VIRGINIA: Orlando?
FIN.
ACT II
WAKING
ORLANDO, now a woman, wakes up alone.
ORLANDO: Whose limbs are these? So graceful and soft.
Whose body is this, this changing, feeling garment of flesh?
It must be me, it must be mine
Whose voice do I hear?
It speaks my thoughts, it must be mine.
Is this my hand? It writes like I do. It must be mine.
VIRGINIA: Their faces remained identical, as their portraits prove.
And his memory-- but the future we must, for convention’s sake, say ‘her’ for ‘his’ and ‘she for ‘he’—her memory was fully intact.
ORLANDO: Yet something is different.
I’m the same, and I’m not.
My skin seems darker, my heart beats faster.
Perhaps I have gypsy blood in my veins?
What will become of me now?
VIRGINIA: Orlando, come to England. Meet me there in two hundred years!
THE SHIP TO ENGLAND Orlando is on the deck of a ship. A crewman watches her from high up the mast, while the captain caters to her every whim.
ORLANDO: How clumsy these skirts are! Dragging at one’s heels.
But how well this color suits my delicate skin, this shade of green-
CAPTAIN: Take care, milady.
Such delicate skin…should be sheltered… from the sun and wind.
Would Madame like some shade? (Waits.)
Does Madame need a hand?
Would Madame like protection? From an admiring man?
ORLANDO: Skirts catch the wind, catch the light
Catch the eye …of a man close by.
Once I brushed such silken skirts aside
Now I hold them hold them still, hold them down.
And what if I simply let them fly?
Fly in the wind!
But … the wind blows…a little harder and stronger?
…fills it up like a sail…?
Perhaps I’ll fly, fly high in the wind.
Or perhaps I’ll fall, down/headlong into the sea…
Skirts will catch the water
Pull me down, drag me under
“Save me, pull me up, pull me in”…I’ll cry… (they’ll run to my rescue!)
But no…for what kind of woman does this?
Jumps into the sea and hopes to be saved!
If those are the rules, I just won’t play…
No, let them fly! [Wind blows, skirts fly up].
[The sailor watching her is captivated, loses his grip, falls.]
Just look how the sight of a leg
Catches his eye.
He loses his head, loses his grip/footing.
Look, how the sight of a leg
Brings a man tumbling down…
Straight into the sea.
Why not let skirts go flying up, and let men come tumbling down?
Men..what fools! And women too!
VIRGINIA: She became aware of the strengths and the weaknesses of each.
As a man, she looks the world in the face! Hands free ready to draw the sword!
As a woman, she turns and smiles, her hands holding her satins in place.
ORLANDO:
But now…I’ll never be able to crack a man on the head, or curse, or lead an army . . .
Instead I’ll have to pour out tea and ask my lords how they like it.
Won’t that be splendid! Wonderul. What kind of a life will I have now?
And what kind of love?
Sasha. Pepita.
I’ve always loved women.
And still I love women. Even more than before.
VIRGINIA: And you will love so very many of them, too, won’t you?
You’ll arranged all your lovers on a ladder….
But the top rung of the ladder….that will always be mine!
CAPTAIN: Madame…the Cliffs of England! St Paul’s; the Tower of London.
ORLANDO: The city, utterly changed! Yet somehow the same…
CAPTAIN: Westminster abbey. Houses of Parliament.
ORLANDO: There stood the queen. There, we danced on the ice. And here I first kissed Sasha’s hand…Mustn’t weep, it isn’t manly.
AT THE BORDER
Disembarking on shore, Orlando is stopped by a border official.
OFFICER: Papers?
ORLANDO: All burned to a crisp, I’m afraid.
OFFICER: Name?
ORLANDO: Orlando.
OFFICER: Date of birth?
ORLANDO: A couple of centuries back. 1653. To be exact.
OFFICER: Age?
ORLANDO: Put me down as thirty-something.
OFFICER: Address in England?
ORLANDO: My family has owned Northumbria, since time immemorial.
OFFICER: Profession?
ORLANDO: Aspiring poet, former ambassador. Occasional duke.
OFFICER: No profession.
ORLANDO: I’m Orlando! Kindly do let me pass.
OFFICER: Any relation to Lord Orlando?
ORLANDO: Quite closely related. I am him; he is me.
OFFICER: How can that be? You’re clearly a she. Who are you? Where is he?
ORLANDO: I was he, now I'm she.
OFFICER: Not an option! It’s one or the other. The law is clear: one sex per person.
ORLANDO: (dreamily) : Do our clothes shape us? Or do we shape them?
We say we change our clothes…
It’s not true! The clothes go on being male or female, out of habit.
While we shift and change below.
And it that’s true of the clothes?
What of this? This changing feeling garment of flesh
That we wear always and ever.
OFFICER: Let’s start again. The law is clear: one sex per person.
ORLANDO: What kind of person …is so simple as that? Only one sex?
In each of us there’s always a little of the other.
a mixture of both.
I drink like a sailor, can’t resist gambling, and I live for the hunt.
But I rescue stray kittens, have no love of war, and I’m perplexed by machines. Which would you call me? Lady or Lord?
OFFICER: How should I know? I never saw such a case.
Your lands and titles are confiscated, until we fiture this out.
Enter incognito. Or incognita, as it may prove to be.
Stage: Various couples (male and female) emerge, all wanting to cross the border and enter England.
OFFICER (to Orlando) Want my advice? A lady should marry!
That’s how it’s done. [He allows the traditional couples to pass, and welcomes them in.]
ORLANDO: I can hardly move anymore. Couples everywhere one looks!
CUSTOMS: Bound together with metal rings.
You two may pass. (to another) Enjoy your stay. (to another) Welcome back.
ORLANDO: Everyone’s already mated or dead.
Is there no other way?
OFFICER/COUPLE: Married at 19, with nineteen children on the way.
OFFICER: Thus does the empire come into being.
You two may pass.
ORLANDO: What a world we live in, nowadays. What a world to be sure!
OFFICER: Just find a man and tie the knot.
Or be someone’s governess. Be someone’s whore!
And quickly! From the looks of it, you’ve no time to spare.
ORLANDO: But why can’t a lady just walk through life alone?
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
VIRGINIA: -Great clouds began to gather over the land. All was darkness; all was doubt; all was confusion.
Men felt the chill in their hearts, the damp in their minds. The sexes grew further apart, and no open conversation was tolerated.
Rugs covered the floors; curtains blocked the windows. Beards were run. Nothing was left bare.
Rain and dampness crept into every house, swelling the wood, rotting the stone. Ivy and evergreen spread like a riot. Nature ran rampant, breeding and seething. Fertility continued unchecked…in the henhouse, the garden, the bedroom. Thus did the British empire come into being.
The Eighteenth century was over; the Nineteenth century had begun.
ORLANDO: I shall ignore them all, and live as I like.
But this creeping damp…swells even my prose!
Thirty five pages, all l about nothing. Insipid, inflated. This won’t do at all.
VIRGINIA: Orlando … the spirit of the age is against you. There’s nothing to do but submit. Get a ring on your finger.
ORLANDO: Fie on your customs! I’ll run with the hounds,
sleep on the moor, I’ll be nature’s bride.
But these skirts drag me down. Collect litter and leaves.
Heavens! I’m stuck!
SHELMARDINE
SHELMARDINE: Madame? You’re hurt!
ORLANDO: Some say I am dead...
SHELMARDINE: Shall I arrange a funeral then? Or would you like a wedding instead!?
ORLANDO: A wedding!?
SHELMARDINE: Do you mean you accept?
ORLANDO: I do! I do! For I am just a little stuck, here. To whom do I have the honor?
SHELMARDINE: Shelmardine Bonthrop Marmaduke. The third.
ORLANDO: Shelmardine! I knew it, when I saw you.
There’s something romantic, chivalrous, passionate, melancholy…yet determined about your name.
Mine is Orlando.
SHELMARDINE: Like a ship in full sail, glowing pink in the setting sun.
ORLANDO: You talk like sailor.
SHELMARDINE: I do, for I am! When a fellow’s castle falls into ruin, what choice is left, but...
ORLANDO/SHELMARDINE: to become a sailor!
ORLANDO: And if a fellow is thwarted in love and in art…what choice does he have…
ORLANDO/SHELMARDINE: but to go to Constantinople!
(Both) Finally someone who understands me!
Wait, that must mean…
ORLANDO: Shel…are you a woman?
SHELMARDINE: Orlando, are you a man?
ORLANDO/SHELMARDINE: We must never, ever be parted!
SHELMARDINE: There’s just this one thing I should tell you.
When the winds shift, I must return to my ship, to my solitude on the unfathomable seas.
ORLANDO (simultaneously): But there’s something I should tell you.
I was in the middle of writing a tribute to eternity; you’ve interrupted me; I must get back to it soon!
VIRGINIA: A clap of thunder. A flash of light. And a ring was passed from hand to hand.
By finding a man on the moor and taking him for her husband, Orlando had finally passed the inspection of the spirit of the age.
She was no longer opposed to it, but no longer of it…
Finally she could live as herself, and none other, and write.
Stage: Orlando sits to write in the setting sun. Shelmardine leaves.
LIFE IS ONE THING, BUT LITERATURE ANOTHER
VIRGINIA: I can’t tell a story of a woman who just sits and stares out the window.
A beauty, in the prime of life. With a new husband who’s away for months at a time.
Since she is a beauty, in the prime of life, won’t she do something?
Perhaps begin to think of a lover! The gardener perhaps?
[Orlando remains focused and keeps writing.]
And she will write the gardener a little note …and they’ll plan to meet at Sunday dusk …
And the lover will come whistle under the window --
…they’ll plan to meet at Sunday dusk …and talk about poetry…
Orlando, Throw him over, your man, your husband, and come. We’ll dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine….
And I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head…millions, myriads.
ORLANDO(OVERJOYED): It’s done, my poem is done! It has only taken four hundred years….
VIRGINIA (picking up the poem, and reading from it): “Orlando: A Life”
Life? Literature? One to be made into the other? But how monstrously difficult!
“ Chapter one: He — for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it…was in the act of slicing at a head which swung from the oak tree…
BELLS indicate shift to PRESENT time.
Stage: Virginia is now the one writing.
VIRGINIA: Today I dipped my pen in the ink, and wrote on a clean sheet: Orlando: a biography. At once my body was flooded with rapture, and my brain with ideas. It’s all about you.
The lust of your flesh and the lure of your mind. Heart, you have none!
I will capture you, body and soul…
(writes) “a candid sullen face”
“…eyes like drenched violets’…”moods that changed with the light”
But how can a biographer round up possible selves
with only an old goose quill and ink?
One does well to account for 6 or 7 selves…but a person may well have as many thousand.
on board a ship; captains and gold lace.
. You at the embassy…your glamour, a weakness of mine…
(pause)
Did you feel a kind of tug, as if your neck was being broken? That was when your story came to an end. .It’s all over the place, incoherent, intolerable, impossible…
Do you exist or did I make you up?
ORLANDO (coming alive and seeing Virginia for the first time):
Virginia, my creator…I’m alive and adoring
Dazzled and enchanted.
It’s the loveliest wisest richest book.
You’ve brought me to life.
It’s a deep and clear crystal in which I see myself.
I’m bewitched by your genius.
I’ve fallen in love-
VIRGINIA: Stay with me, always! Love me, always!
ORLANDO: I’ve fallen in love ..
with Orlando… with being Orlando!
I want nine more lives and nine planets to explore!
THE FUTURE
Stage: ORLANDO enters the future while VIRGINIA remains trapped in the past.
ORLANDO: Oh, Virginia. In the future, everything gets faster and faster.
Men fly through the air. The sky is bright all night long.
VIRGINIA: Damn you, adventuress! To vanish and leave me behind!
i feel torn in a thousand pieces. How shall I get on without you?
Go on loving me, don’t forget.
ORLANDO: Oh, Virginia. In the future, everything get faster and faster. Men fly through the air. The sky is bright all night long.
VIRGINIA: It grows harder to picture you clearly. You come into my presence simply and solely through words.
ORLANDO: I hear voices from all over the world. Messages fly at the speed of light.
VIRGINIA: I can almost see you: you are pink with pearls, lustrous, candle lit…
(In fact, ORLANDO is dressed entirely the opposite, in futuristic clothes or an astronaut’s suit)
VIRGINIA: Where are you now? I got a postcard from nowhere. Heartless.
I want to sink into your arms, feel the festival and firelight, while frozen rose petals fall all around us.
ORLANDO: Oh, Virginia, I want nine lives and nine planets to explore.
VIRGINIA: There's your empty chair. Flowers in your vase. I miss you each moment.
You only exist in words for me now. … I’m re-reading Orlando.
ORLANDO: Darling you're my anchor…
my anchor entangled in gold nuggets at the bottom of the sea.
VIRGINIA: What are you doing at this very moment? I can hardly imagine. Where are you?
ORLANDO: I’m on the other side of the world.
But that’s no reason love why should fade, is it?
VIRGINIA: Orlando?
FIN.
