“Wollny’s Ophelias. Iconography of Madness, which is a performance and theater piece at the same time, features twelve professional actresses who play Ophelia, one after another. The actresses, who come from different theater traditions and generations, all played Ophelia according to their divergent training, knowledge, skills, and so on. The procession of Ophelias was stunning—the audience entered the world of deception, sorrow, and madness caused by the system of patriarchal rule. Some performed the character as a woman completely alienated from reality, while others seemed perfectly “normal.” Any woman would feel that they might also fall, that in the given condition (of Shakespeare’s Hamlet), they would not survive. The eternal feminine that opened before our eyes did not consist in the perpetuation of women’s beauty or seductive capacities, as in the stereotypical fetish of femininity; it became a feminist Howl of the female personae non grata in the male-dominated world. In my text accompanying the project’s online release, I claimed that these Ophelias performed a structural transformation of the public sphere.” 

performance for eleven actresses, 50min Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz 2012, Contemporary Museum Wroclaw 2013, International Schakespear Festival Gdansk 2013 performed by: Iwona Bielska, Monika Dąbrowska, Ewa Domańska, Gabriela Frycz, Anna Ilczuk, Elżbieta Karkoszka, Krystyna Łubieńska, Marta Kalmus-Jankowska, Katarzyna Misiewicz, Karolina Porcari, Agnieszka Radzikowska, Małgorzata Rudzka, Bożena Stryjkówna photos by Adam T. Burton movies by: Małgorzata Mazur