Adapting Woolf: Neil Bartlett and Kabe Wilson in conversation with Dr Eleanor Lybeck Saturday 5 October, 2.30pm

Dr Eleanor Lybeck, Senior Lecturer in Literature at the University’s Institute of Irish Studies and Department of English who has created a successful adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts, will chat with playwright Neil Bartlett and novelist Kabe Wilson about thinking through the process of making adaptations of Woolf relevant.

£6

British novelist, playwright and theatre director Neil Bartlett created the script for the acclaimed staging of Woolf’s Orlando at the Garrick Theatre in London in 2022-3. He’ll share his thoughts about the nuts and bolts of theatrical adaptation, the process of creating that script in particular, about his own very personal relationship with Woolf. Neil’s work includes publishing his fifth novel Address Book, a meditation on queer courage, and creating a live staging of Derek Jarman’s final film Blue with much-loved British actor Russell Tovey.

Joining Eleanor and Neil is Kabe Wilson, a novelist who re-wrote Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own over 5 years to create a new story entitled Of One Woman or So by Olivia N’Gowfri (anagrams of the original title and author’s name). The story is set in contemporary Cambridge where a young African woman student challenges her course of study and offers some radical rethinking of what she wants from an education, what an institution can offer; what needs to be overturned, and what preserved. How should change come about; how can we create the new while keeping the good parts of the old? 

Join Kabe, Neil and Eleanor powerful discussions on complex questions which exercised Woolf in the 1920s and 1930s and continue to challenge us today.