Likewise, Opheliamachine captures "the current historical moment with all its entrapments: the dissolution of national and gender identities, the loss of agency and the solipsism of contemporary lives in an increasingly fragmented—if connected—world, the brutal, animal-like quality of modern relationships, the collapse of a social order and its distinction, the chaos and violence that follows.
"[1] (translated from Italian) Written in the tradition of such experimental texts as Pablo Picasso's The Four Little Girls (1946–47), Antoni Artaud's Jet of Blood (1925), or Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi (1896), Opheliamachine is a collage, pastiche, conglomeration of images that rule over our modern, global, virtual sexuality.
Scholar Niki Tulk calls it "an Artaud-inspired pastiche with Ophelia presented as multiple characters, all exploring sexuality in a largely virtual, and globalized world.
"[3] In a modern global world of unstable national and sexual identities, Hamlet and Ophelia are both what Fouad Ajami calls "children of the fault lines," "rootless residents" for whom "home is neither in the lands of their birth nor in the diaspora communities where people flee the fire and the failure of tormented places."
Hamlet from Opheliamachine is the postmodern "nowhere man," who finds the comfort of belonging in the virtual reality of TV and the Internet, and "who [has] risen to war against the very messy world that forged [him].
"[6] (translated from Italian) Maria Pia Pagani provides extensive critical analysis of the play, published in Mimesis, which states:Opheliamachine reveals the complex experiences and feelings of a contemporary woman.
Showing no shame and making no comprises, Ophelia wants to be an authentic woman, but feels the continual danger of losing herself among the women milling at New York's Port Authority Bus Station.
[7] (translated from Italian) Returning to "How to Lose a Guy in Ten Wars: Introduction to Opheliamachine," Ilinca Todorut also declares:Romanska tests with gusto the postdramatic's aptitude for intertextuality and self-referentiality, for language games and plastic use of story-telling clichés.
Lines mix as in a salad bowl chopped references to feminist, postcolonial, media and political theory... Opheliamachine... rummages through the debris to reaffirm the sense of possibility and freedom within a postideological fluidity.Opheliamachine premiered at City Garage Theatre in Los Angeles 14 June– 28 July 2013.
It was directed by Frédérique Michel and produced and designed by Charles A. Duncombe, with the following cast: Hamlet: Joss Glennie Smith Therapist/Talk Show Host: Leah Harf Ophelia/Writer: Kat Johnston Ophelia/Fighter: Megan Kim Ophelia/Traveler: Saffron Mazzia Gertrude: Cynthia Mance Horatio: RJ Jones Founded in 1987, City Garage has since presented more than two dozen "Critic's Choice" or "Pick of the Week" productions.
The reading was directed by Jackson Gay (Yale School of Drama), with Patch Darragh as Hamlet, Danielle Slavick as Ophelia/Writer, Ceci Fernandez as Ophelia/Fighter, Sarah Sokolovic as Ophelia/Traveler and Jeanine Serralles as Gertrude.
[8] Theaterkompass described the new production, saying, In Magda Romanska's post-dramatic response to Müller, she tries to take control of the narrative as the author of her own fragmented history, as a lover and a madwoman, on a mountain of western values and commodities.
Not an easy task: After all, Ophelia ended up in one of the most famous dysfunctional ruling families in the history of drama, in which the roles seem irrefutably fixed, her relationship with the Danish prince is asymmetrical and whose tragic outcome has long been known.
In the podcast about the show, Anthony Byrnes said: The play itself, written by Magda Romanska, is a series of scenes that explore the themes of femininity, power, sex, rage, love, and madness through a faceted portrayal of Ophelia.
In this world premiere play at City Garage in Santa Monica, Magda Romanska consciously concocts both an homage to and critique of a landmark theatrical composition, 1979's Hamletmachine by Heiner Müller, the successor to Brecht as both director of the Berliner Ensemble and groundbreaking German experimental playwright.
[…] Since City Garage has been conscientious over its two decades in presenting Müller's work locally, it's appropriate that it should mount Romanska's fiercely meditative mirror, which quotes excerpts from Hamletmachine at the beginning and the end in both deference and defiance.
[…] If the modern take on Hamlet is that his consciousness inhibits his ability to act, then the ironies of Opheliamachine posit that radical analysis can be the enemy of effective political action, or put another way, that gender awareness is no refuge from the truism that each of us must reckon ourselves as our own most implacable adversary.
[16] Steven Leigh Morris, wrote for LA Weekly: A vigorous deconstruction of the feminine psyche, image and gender roles, […] Romanska's script—heavy laden with dense imagery and symbolism—explores love, sex, violence, politics, class sensibilities, feminist aesthetics, the vacuities of mass culture and the timeless mystery of death.
[18] Sarah A. Spitz wrote for Santa Monica Daily Press: In the case of City Garage, once again this outstanding local company engages in thought provocation.
[…] The City Garage takes Ophelia out of her poor, put-upon, mad girl role and places her in the context of a media-saturated, social network-driven 21st century world, in which she faces down the forces that shape her image as a woman.
And so the lanky Hamlet Maximilian Diehles haunts the scene as a gender-fluid macho, mother Gertrud (Hilke Altefrohne) as a business-cold girl dealer with a shrimp head.
"[22]And Christian Rakow wrote in Theatre Heute (translated from German) "Opheliamachine is creeping into the private sphere as a potentially feminist answer to the post-dramatic classic Hamletmaschine, where Müller's text was still rambling at the end of the 1970s after seeing the socialist regime and the suppression of the democracy movement in Hungary in '56.
It was published in an edited collection that includes nine different translations of the play (English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Romanian, and Polish) along with introductory essays by Ilinca Todorut and Maria Pia Pagani.
"These different versions of Opheliamachine provide academics, artists and teachers the opportunity to study a fascinating intersection of Shakespeare, translation, adaptation, feminism and avant-garde theatre.