Fluid processes

The new production of Goethe’s Faust Parts 1 and 2, to be performed at the Goetheanum in 2020, will focus on issues of guilt, responsibility and transformation.

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Faust is not a blameless hero. Andrea Pfaehler, the director of the new production of Goethe’s Faust Parts 1 and 2 in 2020 at the Goetheanum, sees Faust as close to the audience: «We are all Faust». The performing time may have been reduced to nine hours, but Andrea Pfaehler still aims at telling «the whole story».

This will be achieved by evoking experiences through the way situations are presented, for instance by focusing on transformative processes. We see such a situation when Faust, the scholar, is in his study, close to committing suicide, but an Easter experience brings him back to life, which he grasps hold of as if newly born. He also enters spaces, however, that are carried by fluid processes and mutating beings: a challenge for Eduardo Torres, who is director of eurythmy. The power of the action and the struggle of the human being to retain his humanity result in tragic developments.

We constantly become guilty through our actions,» Andrea Pfaehler points out. «The question is what we do with that.» She traces an arc from human freedom to becoming guilty to being prepared to take on responsibility. «The riddle Goethe leaves us with is that Faust only becomes interesting to God once he is tempted by evil.»

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