Featured in Texte zur Kunst

Caroline Lillian Schopp on “Ophelia’s Got Talent” By Florentina Holzinger

September 2023

“Ophelia again?!” might be the knee-jerk reaction to Florentina Holzinger’s latest production. Though what may appear like anachronism to the naked eye reveals itself to be a much-needed persistence in face of the patriarchy. In her review, Caroline Lillian Schopp underscores the feminist argument inherent to the staged exclamation of “Ophelia again?!” By combining a close reading of the original text and its historical German translation with the history of the character’s representation and its feminist critique, the art historian probes the relationship between aesthetics and violence that Holzinger and her ensemble perform at the Volksbühne Berlin.

About midway through Ophelia’s Got Talent, Inga Busch asks Florentina Holzinger if she has ever played Ophelia. “Not really,” answers Holzinger, deadpan. “It’s such a great role for auditions!” responds Busch enthusiastically. She proceeds to recite from act 4, scene 7 of Hamlet, where Gertrude describes Ophelia’s drowning to Laertes, indulging the way in which this purple passage interweaves femininity, water, beauty, and death. Ophelia herself does not, of course, appear in this scene in Shakespeare’s text, but Holzinger performs Busch’s recitation. As Busch describes the wildflowers in Ophelia’s “fantastic garlands” and how “there is a willow grows askant the brook,” Holzinger clambers sportingly up a vertical staging ladder. At “an envious sliver broke,” Holzinger, in complete control, lets herself fall, thudding inelegantly down the rungs. Aghast, Busch proceeds to coach her on how to land more gracefully “in the weeping brook,” an impressive multi-laned swimming pool embedded in the main stage of the Volksbühne Berlin, in which other performers are swimming lengths and floating. In response, Holzinger throws herself over the water, belly flopping into the pool and splashing about exuberantly. Feigning frustration with Holzinger’s failure to conform to the script of Ophelia’s “mermaid-like” yet in the end “muddy” death, Busch instructs, “No, no, Florentina, don’t fight it so much,” observing with amazement, “She is hartnäckig” (I will return to this phrase). Busch tries to reposition Holzinger’s body to resemble “that famous oil painting” – no doubt a reference to the pre-Raphaelite John Everett Millais’s Ophelia (1851–52) – while encouraging her to sex it up and project a more positive attitude: “I want to see your breasts. Lie still. Be happy.” With Holzinger finally floating on her back, impassive and wide-eyed, Busch concludes: “She is beautiful.”