Ophelia’s Got Talent

In the organizer's words:

by and with Florentina Holzinger - Guest performance as part of the asphalt Festival - In German and English with English surtitles - on July 11, 12 and 13, 2025 - Schauspielhaus, Großes Haus

Probably no performance artist has attracted more attention across Europe in recent months than Florentina Holzinger: the Austrian choreographer was named the most influential artist of 2024 by the renowned art magazine "Monopol", her opera project "SANCTA" caused a sensation far beyond the cultural scene, and her stage plays at the Berlin Volksbühne are regularly sold out to the last seat. asphalt has been closely associated with Holzinger for many years. The 2025 Summer Festival presents her highly acclaimed work "Ophelia's Got Talent", co-produced by asphalt, for the first time in Düsseldorf.

In "Ophelia's Got Talent", Florentina Holzinger stages Shakespeare's Ophelia from "Hamlet" as the central character in an extravagant, maximalist show in a fantastic water landscape with swimming pools, water tanks and a hovering helicopter. An all-female ensemble presents superheroines with different talents who deconstruct stereotypical ideas of body images and femininity in a mix of acrobatics, dance and grotesque humor. The spectacular revue alternates between ballet, contemporary circus, stunts and cinematic action scenes. While Shakespeare's Ophelia perishes passively and shyly in patriarchal structures and ends up as a beautiful corpse in the water, Florentina Holzinger allows her to perform powerfully and independently. Ophelia's walk into the water is reinterpreted as a feminist empowerment strategy, a self-determined and controlled flirtation with mortal danger.

"Ophelia's Got Talent" was invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen 2023 and won the Austrian NESTROY Award for best actress (Saioa Alvarez Ruis) and best stage design (Nikolas Knezevic). The most important German theater award FAUST honored the piece as best dance performance.

"Her work has a visual and emotional impact that leaves no one cold and is unparalleled in the art world in its consistency," said Monopol magazine, explaining its choice of Holzinger as Artist of the Year. "She thinks bigger and freer than many in the classical art world and shows no fear of pathos and spectacle". Holzinger is unique in the theater landscape with her vitality, persuasiveness and strength.