Ophelia’s story in a way you’ve never heard it before, and seven more ways as well. Ophelia is trapped, stuck inside the machinery that has created her consciousness, fighting to be heard. Hamlet, overwhelmed by the ceaseless flood of media, mindlessly watches TV, consuming a mish-mash of beauty and horror; a daily soup of innocence and violence. The two of them hopelessly confined, and separated by the Atlantic Ocean. A polemic response to Heiner Mueller’s Hamletmachine, Opheliamachine is a postmodern tale of love, sex and politics in a fragmented world of confused emotions and global, virtual sexuality. Since its premiere in 2013, Magda Romanska’s celebrated experimental play has been performed and studied around the world, with each culture and language feeding into and responding to Opheliamachine’s collage of modern existence. This edited collection brings together eight different translations of the play, offering English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Romanian and Polish language interpretations of Romanska’s original text. Along with two introductory essays, 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.
