While in the first part of the tragedy Faust primarily meanders in a loop of personal cupidity and pleasure, in the second part Goethe breaks his character on a multiplicity of motifs and historical and mythical references. Goethe, who throughout his life battled against a false concept of individualism and a cult of sentimental feeling, peels out the character of Faust as a person who learns to read his own specific subjectivity in a historical and cultural context. The protagonist travels a long journey through millennia and continents until “for the sake of the whole and of the merits of the question he sets his own self back from the false endeavours of an individual wishing to appear magnificent”, as stated by Goethe himself.
“The metaphysics of Faust are not contained in the endeavouring effort spurred on from infinity by a Neokantian reward, but in the disappearance of the natural order into another, different one. …is it not that the wisdom of parts of the work lies in how little identity with himself Man actually has, how small that ‘immortal’ portion is that is carried away as if it were nothing at all? The life force, as a force that enables Man to continue to live, is equated to oblivion. Only through oblivion, but not without transformation, does anything at all survive. … Hope is not the memory we retain, but the return of what had been forgotten.” T.W. Adorno
Silvia Rieger staged the magnitude of this task as a play for two characters. The clarity of the poetic composition, the cleanness of the metric and the sharpness of the vocabulary cast a special atmosphere on Torsten König’s sets of light.
With: Michael Klobe and Silvia Rieger
Lighting / Stage and footlights: Torsten König
Costumes: Bert Neumann, Esther Friedemann
Stage adaptation: Dunja Arnaszus
Directed by: Silvia Rieger
With: Michael Klobe and Silvia Rieger
Stage and Costumes Supplier: Torsten König, Bert Neumann, Esther Friedemann
Dramaturgy: Dunja Arnaszus
Director: Silvia Rieger
