Ophelia’s Got Talent

In the twilight of the Age of Aquarius—a time that marks the transition from technological innovation to humanitarian concerns and collective responsibility—the stories of Ophelia’s heirs are inexorably rising to the surface.

On the wet terrain of the stage, “being Ophelia” is practiced: the embodiment of the laws that surround her and the conscious fulfillment of others’ fantasies are part of an ambivalent game of which she is the master. The stories of her ancestors—Leda, Melusine, Undine, the nymphs, Nereids, and Sirens—continue to shape biographies. They are excellent dancers who love music and lure people into the water, draw them into the depths, and allow them to gaze there into the mirror of Venus. But the true locus of their significance remains hidden, submerged in darkness. Only through the process of decomposition do their bodies reach the surface, drifting there until they are discovered—or until they disintegrate and become one with nature.

Water is the element of adaptation and, at the same time, a symbol of expansion—an endless, eternal, indissoluble unity with the outside world. Femininity has often been iconographically associated with water, but also with death: the mirror-like pond represents the domestication of female subjectivity, the foam on the sea its dissolution, the fishtail its denied sexuality.

In an oceanic landscape rich with cultural-historical references to aquatic beings and drowned unknowns, the challenge is not simply to escape the precarious circumstances of a present shaped by climate catastrophe. Rather, this world speculates on new life forms that absorb these conditions, transform them, and manifest themselves as new beings.

Fluctuation, reflection, reproduction, healing, and violence: In Florentina Holzinger's new work at the Volksbühne, a multidisciplinary ensemble spanning several generations embarks on a physical study of the psychology of water in the 21st century.

GERMAN / ENGLISH SUBTITLES