FAUST/FAUSTUS: A Duet for Devils

Faust/Faustus A Duet For Devils, combines theatre with video and performance art to bring together Goethe’s Faust and Marlowe’s Faustus in the last hour of their diabolic pact.

Elements of both works are incorporated with a wide range of Elizabethan fragments culled from Thomas Nashe, John Webster, Ben Johnson, John Donne and contemporary sources including Oscar Wilde, Edith Sitwell and Jose Garcia Villa.

The project incorporates a performative interpretation of the development and manifestation of the HIV-resistant CCRS-Delta 32 gene. This mutant gene appears in Europe, approximately 700 years ago, in the midst of the catastrophic Bubonic plague of the 14th century. Slowly coming to us/in us across time, beyond the ideology of church and state and oblivious to shame and guilt.

With intuition of regenerative forces afoot, Faust and Faustus defy damnation and confirm their faith in a transcendent future determined by the utopian instincts of the body machine. The power of desire in alliance with the determined cellular trajectory of survival and continuity.

The project was conceived and designed by Leon Johnson (Associate Professor of Art at the University of Oregon) He explains, "The production is a cyclical, evolutionary love letter, which began 10 years ago, as love story. A mystery story. My lover happened to be dead four hundred years. Dust and bone fragments filtered throughout a small churchyard in Deptford. The residual, elemental perfume of an Elizabethan roaring boy. A strata of bonestars. His name was Christopher."

Marlowe may never have seen his Faustus on stage, a knife through the eye ended all seeing. The censors and hacks claimed his play. This performance attempts a reclamation.