Opheliamachine is a postmodernist drama by the Polish-born American playwright and dramaturg, Magda Romanska. Written in the span of ten years, from 2002 to 2012, the play is a response to and polemic with the German playwright Heiner Mueller's "Hamletmachine" (in German, Die Hamletmaschine). Like "Hamletmachine", "Opheliamachine" is loosely based on "Hamlet", by William Shakespeare. The play originated in relation to Romanska's doctoral dissertation on the representation of death and femininity.
In "Hamletmachine", Mueller deconstructs the impossible position of an Eastern European intellectual at the peak of the Cold War as well as the seemingly disappearing agency of the author. 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." (translated from Italian) 
Overview.
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. It is a postmodern tale of love and sex in a fragmented world of questionable values. 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." 
"Opheliamachine" captures the dissolution of the national (local, sexual, etc.) identities leading to the kind of physical and psychological displacement that used to be the traditional immigrant, diasporic condition and which now has become the new normalized global mode of being, a new human condition. It was inspired by Witold Gombrowicz' concept of "filistria: the realm of displaced persons of uncertain gender and sexuality living in a postcolonial - and now postideological – world."
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]." Ophelia is split between contradictory drives and desires, turning to self-violence in a grotesque gesture of gender mockery.
In her introduction to the Bloomsburry edition of the play, "How to Lose a Guy in Ten Wars: Introduction to Opheliamachine," Ilinca Todorut, theatre scholar and critic, states: In "Opheliamachine", the landscape is a cemetery of things, a trash heap of objets d'art, rotting corpses, broken devices, and assorted detritus of Western civilization... Hamlet and Ophelia are represented by multiple characters, each in conflict with him- or herself and the other. The plot follows the courtship between Ophelia and Hamlet, their wedding day, their marriage settled into the routine of her-talking-while-working to a him-devouring-TV-on-a-couch. Along this narrative, bodies float, army boots clobber to death, babies are merchandise, mothers eat children's brains, gun shots splatter brains, flesh is set on fire. The usual. It is obviously a comedy... The play ends with the image of Ophelia lighting up a match as dusk falls. She may use it to torch Hamlet doused in gasoline, symbolic of the old world with its heroes, cultures and ideas that failed us; she may use it to guide us and Hamlet through the night.Playwright Magda Romanska says in the introduction to the Italian translation that "Opheliamachine" "...was meant to be a response and a polemic with [Heiner] Mueller's "Die Hamletmaschine". In "Hamletmachine", Muller tries to deconstruct the impossible position of an Eastern European intellectual at the peak of the Cold War as well as the seemingly disappearing agency of the author. The gender, sex and violence are part of the equation, particularly in Germany which has been struggling to come to terms with its own historical glorification of raw power and masculinity." (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. Cruelly entrapped in a machine created by her own conscience, Ophelia exploits this to unravel her contradictions and those of our age. 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. [...] Hamlet's failure to hit the target seems to suggest the dark despair of the potshot in "Uncle Vanya". Today Doctor Chekov might say that this Hamlet in exile is suffering from: 'techno-solitude,' a global disease steadily taking more victims, particularly in America. (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. Unexpected imagery explodes into the visual field freely and aggressively. 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.
Premiere.
"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. Its production history includes groundbreaking experimental texts by Neil LaBute, Sarah Kane, Heiner Mueller and Charles Mee.
Performance History.
On October 27, 2014, "Opheliamachine" received a staged reading at the experimental performance space, The Brick Theatre in Brooklyn, NY. 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.
"Opheliamachine" opened at the Berliner Ensemble in Germany on September 30, 2022. It was translated by Theresa Schlesinger and directed by Uršulė Barto. The assistant director was Kathinka Schroeder and the dramaturg was Jan-Stephan Schmieding. The cast included Nina Burns as Ophelia, Max Diehle as Hamlet, and Hilke Altefrohne as Gertrude.
"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 "Opheliamaschine" Romanska, an American writer with Polish roots, gives space to the female perspective on a complex and yet disturbingly traditional world. She traces the mechanisms of patriarchal structures in relationships in an associative and pointed manner, focusing on the vulnerability of body and mind. (translated from German) 
In May 2024, students at Dhaka University, the oldest and largest public university in Bangladesh, staged a production of "Opheliamachine" at Natmandal, the department laboratory/auditorium. It was directed and translated into Bengali by Assistant Professor Somaiya Moni, and performed by Students of 5th Semester, 3rd Year BA Honours.
In June 2024, Sjoerd Eltink &amp; Maja Brouwer included "Opheliamachine" in their show "Ophelia: Splash Zone" "a queer theatrical concert that investigates gender, humanity, repertoire and the necessities for self-expression," which was performed at Het Nationale Theater, the main theater company of The Hague in the Netherlands. 
Critical Reception.
The City Garage production of "Opheliamachine" was critically acclaimed, receiving a slew of positive reviews from many LA-based media. Radio station KCRW (local NPR affiliate) picked "Opheliamachine" as "Thing to See" among "Five Things To Do" in LA over a 4 July weekend. 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. Our title character is split in three: we have Ophelia the Brain—typing away at a vintage typewriter complete with bell; Ophelia the terrorist clad in black fatigues with a .45 tucked into her bare midriff; and finally Ophelia the Mad confined to a wedding dress and, at times, a wheelchair. […] If you're looking for a play or a company that ties everything into neat little knots—this probably isn't for you. If you're willing to tackle a play as much as experience it—you won't be disappointed you spent 60 minutes in their world.
In the preview of the show, Jessica Rizzo in "The Cultural Weekly" wrote:
Romanska gives us an unsettling and internally conflicted picture of global gender relations. [...] She owes more to the tradition of astringently feminist, linguistically challenging playwriting which includes Sarah Kane and Elfriede Jelinek than she owes to Muller. A worthy heir to this legacy, Romanska carves out a space of critical resistance in "Opheliamachine", a space where the ugliest and the most beautiful of our desires can exist, as they do in life, side by side, where the death-dealing and life-giving vie for dominance. 
Myron Meisel, from "The Hollywood Reporter", wrote:
Difficult comedy of ideas and ideologies honestly stimulates with its perceptiveness . . . . 
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. Romanska is a well-versed academic and accomplished dramaturg, and she heeds the cherished advice to write about what she knows. Thankfully, she has a vision comprehensive enough to relish irony and pose deeper questions than mere indictment. If the world might be viewed more rewardingly without the arbitrary distinctions between the sexes, those prejudices must be confronted if any substantive change is to be accomplished in the world as it is. Romanska dramatizes the wisdom that confrontation comprises only the first essential steps. [. . .] This funny yet brutal play needs the inventive mise-en-scene to support its fecundity of ideas amidst the tumult of its conflicting impulses. And don't be afraid: It is OK, even purgative, to laugh.
Philip Brandes of "Los Angeles Times", praised the production:
An uncompromising vision. […] fiercely confrontational new play. […] In her own fashionably postmodern fashion, the title character in the visually stylish "Opheliamachine" at Santa Monica's City Garage is a tragic figure, though she bears only slight textual ties to Shakespeare's original archetype. [. . .] stream-of-consciousness monologues as densely associative and enigmatic as Müller's [. . .] Though Ophelia's quest for self-determination teeters on the brink of inevitable annihilation, she "fails better" (in Samuel Beckett's sense). With few traditional theater points of reference to navigate by, her uncompromising journey is not for the intellectually incurious.
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. This is theater that's not easily accessible and is devilishly bleak at times, but it's not without shards of humor, and is relentlessly provocative and challenging.
Rose Desena wrote for "The Los Angeles Post":
Stunning piece of