Output details

Vanessa and Virginia

Vanessa and Virginia is a play adapted from Susan Sellers’ novel, which is almost exclusively formed of a monologue told by the post-impressionist painter Vanessa Bell about and to her sister the writer Virginia Woolf. The central research challenge was adapting this monologue interior form into an exterior. The process required an experimental dramatic structure. The life story of the two sisters is told via a series of fluid scenes. It uses a mixture of dialogue and monologue, visual suggestion in the form of the moving image backdrop and aurally by the original musical score written by Jeremy Thurlow. Research was conducted into Woolf and theatre and the Charleston farmhouse, as well as through extensive research into the letters, diaries, biographies, novels, art and memoirs of the two sisters. Vanessa and Virginia was performed at the Riverside Studios, London, March and April 2013, and twelve other venues, including the Contemporary Woolf Conference at Aix University, September 2010, and British Day, Krakow, November 2010. The tour has also led to workshops, talks and post-show Q & A sessions with the general public which have evolved out of research into the process of adaptation. It has been nominated for 5 Off West End Awards including Best New Play and Most Promising Playwright.