Romanska’s ‘Opheliamachine’ Staged in Bangladesh

From May 14-18, students at Dhaka University, the oldest and largest public university in Bangladesh, will stage a production of Performing Arts Professor Magda Romanska‘s play, Opheliamachine, at Natmandal, the department labratory/auditorium. It is directed and translated into Bengali by Assistant Professor Somaiya Moni, and performed by Theatre and Performance Studies students.

In 2024, Opheliamachine was published by Bloomsbury in an edited collection that includes nine different translations of the play (English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Romanian, and Polish) along with introductory essays by Ilinca Todorut and Maria Pia Pagani.

“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.”

The play, in its many translations, allows academics, artists, and teachers the opportunity to study a “fascinating intersection of Shakespeare, translation, adaptation, feminism, and avant-garde theatre,” according to Bloomsbury.