Ophelia In Souliloquy.

Ophelia In Souliloquy from In Souliloquy on Vimeo.

She chose her own end. Don't forget that.

Ophelia In Souliloquy by Tilly Lunken (After William Shakespeare's Hamlet)
Directed by Victorine Pontillon
Performed by Lilian Schiffer.

In the play Ophelia is there to illustrate Hamlet's decaying character. She's little more than an object in both his and the audience eyes. There is no worth to her words, no consideration in her despair - she is reduced to a cut flower.

Our Ophelia is everything else in a person behind such a perception. There is no room for psuedo-romantic illusions with our Ophelia. She's shot starkly, with no artifice and Lilian performs her with a directness that peirces through any remaining preconceptions.

This piece has been exceptionally well received, partly because she engages as much with her representation post Hamlet and how complacent we have become with that. Be clear, she challenges. Meet this gaze with your assumptions. She doesn’t care if we do not understand why, but there is a why far beyond the absence we get in the play and the famous images of her death that litter our art history. In truth the images of her lying back forever half submerged make her skin crawl. Ophelia is honest, she does not care for beauty.

You can read more details and thoughts about writing Ophelia In Souliloquy in this post Why Ophelia I wrote on our In Souliloquy website.