Playing Faust

Faustus: “How comes it, then, that thou art out of hell?“
Mephistopheles: “Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.”
(Christopher Marlowe)

Goethe’s Faust: Part II, Fifth act, Open country. Care enters, to lead Faust, in extreme old age, to his death. On the threshold between life and death, memories of his scientific curiosity, the pact with the devil. lustfulness and love’s torment, devil’s flight and witches’ kitchen, take hold of Faust, camouflaged sometimes as a droll story and sometimes as a poetic visual theatre. Science, woman or world: Faust’s claim of ownership is led ad absurdum in his death. His happy vision of a free earth: where a free race, in freedom, stand is nothing more than a burst paper bag filled with dust. Does anything remain after this debacle?

And we? Do we remember, what a soul is? And which poor devil will give us anything for it if it is nothing worth to us?

Musically challenged by Charlotte Wilde’s live produced sound installations, the two puppeteers Christoph Bochdansky and Michael Vogel will put on the old hat and bravely go beyond its brim.