Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of contributors
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- PART I MODERNITY
- PART II THEATRE
- 13 Goethe's Faust: theatre, meta-theatre, tragedy
- 14 Faust beyond tragedy: hidden comedy, covert opera
- 15 Theatricality and experiment: identity in Faust
- 16 Rhetorical action: Faust between rhetoric, poetics and music
- 17 Directing Faust: an interview
- 18 A contradictory whole: Peter Stein stages Faust
- 19 Re-thinking and staging Goethe's Faust at the State Theatre Stuttgart 2005–6
- 20 Strehler's Faust in performance
- Select bibliography
- Index
- References
20 - Strehler's Faust in performance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 June 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of contributors
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- PART I MODERNITY
- PART II THEATRE
- 13 Goethe's Faust: theatre, meta-theatre, tragedy
- 14 Faust beyond tragedy: hidden comedy, covert opera
- 15 Theatricality and experiment: identity in Faust
- 16 Rhetorical action: Faust between rhetoric, poetics and music
- 17 Directing Faust: an interview
- 18 A contradictory whole: Peter Stein stages Faust
- 19 Re-thinking and staging Goethe's Faust at the State Theatre Stuttgart 2005–6
- 20 Strehler's Faust in performance
- Select bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
I believe above all that our production is the unequivocal demonstration of the endurance, and thus of the modernity, of Goethe's text. People today should tremble before the relevance of this text.
Ours has been a work of humility in our attempt to give real body, on the stage, to one of the greatest works of human culture, which Goethe himself had written and intended as a work for the theatre. On this point we have never had any doubt. We have never hesitated to believe in the ‘performability’ of the Faust-Tragedy, deemed by so many to be ‘unperformable’ in the case of the Second Part. For us there is no higher, more complex, more experimental and dazzling theatricality than this journey towards the Infinite.
Giorgio StrehlerA PROJECT FOR A NEW THEATRE
A ‘challenge’, a ‘journey’, an ‘adventure’: these are some of the words which recur in Giorgio Strehler's presentation of his Faust. And the undertaking of such a theatrical enterprise is described as ‘daring’, ‘risky’, ‘perilous’, ‘hazardous’, ‘intrepid’ … Intense excitement together with the thrill of danger are the pervading emotions conveyed by Strehler's notes on the Faust project. Not only did he conceive and direct the project, but he played numerous roles, translated Goethe's text, was dramaturge of the script and, still more striking and unprecedented in the light of his career up to that time, interpreted the role of Faust.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Goethe's FaustTheatre of Modernity, pp. 306 - 323Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011