DOCTOR FAUSTUS
Premiered University Theatre, May 2010
Production Credits

"an exciting and enterprising production"
Lin Clark, Theatreview

Dr Faustus, scholar, magician and proto-scientist, sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for knowledge and for becoming a black magic spectacular entertainer.

From a time when the certainties of God and nature were increasingly destabilised by the schism of the Christian religion and the birth of science, Marlowe's Faustus is both folk hero and villain. He speaks to a contemporary audience caught at a similar, destabilising social moment, when the success of science has led to a highly technologised entertainment culture but also to the possibility of the self-destruction of the human race. As with Faustus, our simultaneous quest for knowledge and distraction leads us into an unknown future. What are we selling our soul for? And what sort of hell awaits us?

Faustus sells his soul for knowledge but is distracted into illusionism and spectacular entertainment instead.

He ultimately finds out that hell, a place that he doesn't believe in and therefore doesn't care if he is condemned to, has always surrounded him already.

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Reviews

Doctor Faustus
Elizabeth O'Connor, RadioNZ, Arts On Sunday

 When magic plays second fiddle
Alan Scott, The Press
 
Exciting and enterprising but spectacle overwhelms language
Lin Clark, Theatreview, Christchurch