"Her uncluttered directorial sensibility…gorgeous stage painting will never be overlooked." --TheatreMania.com

oph3lia examines the archetype and themes emerging from the character of Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet in a contemporary and international context. Featuring a multi-talented cast, imaginative production design by Clint Ramos and a deeply moving score by Andy Gillis. Three conditions of femininity are explored through interweaving narratives:

Silent Ophelia follows the story of the immigrant experience. A young Japanese woman comes to New York City, a complete stranger, and embarks on a mysterious journey through her memory and the anonymous city. Swept up in the rhythms of a foreign city, she discovers that she can go through life without ever uttering a word.

Singing Ophelia takes place in a Christian international school in Far East Asia, where the students and teachers have formed their own hierarchies and social system within the school walls.

Mad Ophelia is art and entertainment—cultures clash in a theatre producer’s office and the translator bears the brunt. This section describes the mad and maddening collision of cultures and languages in the world of entertainment production. Compromises of artistic and personal integrity punctuate the struggle for voice and power in the creation of “art.”  

These three stories of disjoint and disconnection portray the convergence of dream and reality in a globalized world; they pose a surprising and theatrical inquisition and exploration of identity, girl/womanhood, and culture.  Intricately choreographed, the piece incorporates a variety of performance styles featuring shadow puppetry and dance, explosive references to pop culture that dominates across international boundaries, and original music.

Aya Ogawa endeavors to create imaginative plays with her collaborators that challenge notions of what the American aesthetic and identity are by infusing them with a multiplicity of perspectives. By incorporating influences from outside the U.S. both in style, form and content, her work refines an international language of theater.

Aya Ogawa, born in Tokyo, is a writer, director, translator and performer.
As a playwright and director, her play Serendipity was winner at Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival (1996) and finalist at Humana Festival at the Actors Theater of Louisville. Her Eating Dirt was produced at SoHo Rep (1999), and she directed it for Theaters Against War at HERE (2003).  She directed her play A Girl of 16 in its world premiere (2003). She was commissioned to write for Buglisi/Foreman’s Gravel Bed (Joyce Theater, 2005). She directed her play pictures of the drowned at New York Theatre Workshop’s 4th Street Theater (2005). Her latest play in development ARTIFACT was presented as a work-in-progress at the City University of New York’s PRELUDE ’07 Festival.

She was the recipient of a 2005 Artistic Fellowship at New York Theater Workshop (where she is now a Usual Suspect), Van Lier Fellowship at New Dramatists (2005-2006), and HERE Artist Residency (2006 to present).  She is also a recipient of the Space Grant at BAX (Brooklyn Arts Exchange) and Swing Space award at the LMCC (Lower Manhattan Cultural Council) for the winter of 2006 and spring of 2008.   She is a 2006 recipient of the Urban Artist Initiative Grant for Individual Artists administered by the Asian American Artist Alliance, a 2008 grantee of the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) Individual Artist Theater Commissioning Grant and Axe-Houghton Foundation.

knife, inc. is a collective of visual, audio, technology and theatre artists who create time-based works that explore the multiplicity of experience of living in an international context. The company’s work is designed to investigate the moments of crisis, the collision of the past and the future. The company seeks a modern, international language of art. The work is a home for this search. (www.knifeinc.org)