Faust I

The story of Doctor Faust, who sells his soul to the devil, has been part of the core repertoire of European literature ever since the 16th century. At the end of the 18th century the material underwent a radical transformation at the hands of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He worked on his Faust project for a period of almost sixty years. In his magnum opus, Goethe creates a reflective space – semantically overdetermined, expansive and defying interpretation – that opens a vista far into the 19th century and on into the modern age. 

With the famous dictum »Two souls dwell, oh! in my breast« Goethe’s Faust describes not only his personal drama, but an experience that has become symbolic of modern subjectivity: the ego no longer manifests itself as a closed unit, but as a texture of contradictory forces.  Faust should no longer be read as a historical individual but as a case that typifies the present day: high-achieving, successful and constantly on the move.  He is making the most of himself, is effective, but at the same time he is trapped, permanently at a distance from himself. His conflict is indicative of a form of existence in which the subject shapes itself while being broken by its own ambitions. 

Ulrich Rasche, who has won multiple prizes for his strictly formal, through composed productions, condenses these events into an interiorised chamber play. The stage becomes an inner space on which the characters embody the forces of a conflicted consciousness. Mephisto appears less as an external force than as a shadow of Faust himself – as an expression of his own destructive impulses. The power that drives Faust on comes not from the outside, but from within himself. Goethe’s drama shows modern man as someone driven on by a principle of constantly outdoing what has gone before. The tension between self-control and loss of control erupts into violence – not only in individual behaviour but as the consequence of a social dynamic that inseparably combines escalation and destruction.