THEATRUM MUNDI

Volterra 1981

Blois-Malakoff 1985

Holstebro 1986

Salento 1987

Bologna 1990

Brecon-Cardiff 1992

Londrina 1994

Umeå 1995

Copenhagen 1996

Montemor-O-Novo 1998

Bielefeld 2000

EGO FAUST
Bielefeld  2000

Characters and actors:
Faust: Torgeir Wethal
Mephisto: Augusto Omolú
Margherita: Kanichi Hanayagi
Marta:Sae Nanaogi
Mephisto’s shadow: Roberta Carreri
Old age: Cristina Wistari
Youth: I Nyoman Budi Artha
A peasant: Ni Wayan Sekarini
Three girls dancing: Sae Nanaogi, Ni Made Sarniani and Julia Varle
Two children playing:  Ni Ketut Maringsih and Ni Made Sarniani
Mad Margherita: I Made Djimat, Augusto Omolú and Julia Varley
Margherita’s ghost: Sae Nanaogi
Rangda (Balinese witch): I Made Djimat
Mr Peanut (Death): Julia Varley
Barong (Balinese lion): I Nyoman Budi Artha and I Wayan Naka
Shishi (Japanese lion): Akira Mark Oshima
Garuda (Vishnu’s vulture): Ni  Ketut Maringsih
Kleist’s bear: Kai Bredholt
Balinese clowns: I Made Djimat and I Wayan Bawa
Japanese clown: Sasakimi Hanayagi
Odin clown: Roberta Carreri

Musicians and singers
Bali: I Made Djimat, I Wayan Bawa, I Wayan Naka, I Nyoman Budi Artha, I Nyoman Kopelin, Ni Made Sarniani, Ni Wayan Sekarini;  Brazil: Ory Sacramento, Jorge Paim, Cleber Conceição da Paixão
India: Raghunath Panigrahi, Hemant Kumar Das, Chinmaya Kumar-Dash, Annada Prasanna Pattanaik
Japan: Kunitoshi Kineya, Sanshichiro Kineya
Odin Teatret: Kai Bredholt, Emil Ferslev, Jan Ferslev, Nikolaj de Fine Licht, Frans Winther

Music: Kai Bredholt, Bob Dylan, Jan Ferslev, Ivan Hansen, Kunitoshi Kineya, Raghunath Panigrahi and Frans Winther.  Rhytms, classical themes and folk tunes from Bali, Brazil, Europe, India and Japan.

Stage design: Jan de Neergaard
Light design: Fernando Jacon
Sound: Cy Nicklin
Assistant director: Julia Varley
Literary adviser: Nando Taviani
Dramaturgy and direction: Eugenio Barba

INCREDULITY AND SEDUCTION
The double life of Doctor Faust

The story of the life and death of Faust has been told so often, from so many perspectives and clothed in so many guises, that it has truly become a "myth": the same plot repeated over and over again, yet continuously changing.      Its origin is the biography of an adventurer of uncertain name who lived in Germany between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: Johannes or Jörg Faust. He was an astrologer and claimed to have supernatural powers. Melanchton, the theologian friend of Luther, on meeting him defined him as a "vile brute". He was assassinated and the murderer disfigured his corpse in such a way that people began to whisper amongst themselves that only the Devil himself could have carried out such slaughter. Thus Mephisto was born, like a murderous shadow: the second character in the story that was to be so often retold.
In 1683, at the University of Wittemberg, C. Ch. Kirchner presented a thesis in which he disputed the legendary aspects of the story attributed to the imposter "commonly known as Dr. Faust". But by now the legend was widespread. A hundred years previously,  the stories that had passed from mouth to mouth had already been collected together in a book printed anonymously in Frankfurt in 1587, Historia von D. Johann Fausten. Thus begins the double life of a tale often told: the first is bonded to the realm of the printed page; the other soars with the words that are only spoken.
Written from the point of view of a Lutheran moralist, the anonymous book of 1587 blended amusing and hair-raising anecdotes with magical, "scientific" and theological texts, ending with the death of the protagonist who had fallen into the hands of the Devil. It was translated into English and read by Christopher Marlowe who used it as the basis of his drama The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, one of the major successes of the English commercial theatre at the end of the sixteenth century. From Marlowe and the numerous amplified reprints, the story of Faust became known by actors and puppeteers, poets and playwrights. In their hands, Faust and Mephisto became a pair representing alternately moral, philosophical, political and historical polarities. Their opposition ends sometimes in despair, sometimes in an optimistic way: either Hell or Heaven.
Goethe worked on the story of Faust over a period of about sixty years, from 1773 to the year of his death (1832), transforming it into a great myth on a par with that of Oedipus or Prometheus. But at the very moment when it became a symbol  of western thought and history, it was nourished by Indian roots. Goethe was obsessed by the idea of the illusory character of the contrapositions that create the sense of the human drama, an anti-Aristotelian idea which for him characterised Indian mentality and way of thinking.Taking this vision as a starting point, the principles of Good and Evil are antithetical only on the surface, but in the end coincide and collaborate. Mephisto and God collaborate in exactly the same way that Jahvé and Satan do at the beginning of the Book of Job. Faust's subjection to the Devil is ambiguously close to holiness.
In addition to Goethe, in the eighteenth century, Lessing, Weidemann, Klinger and Müller also deal with the figure of Faust. In the next century: Pushkin, Chamisso, Grabbe, Heine, Lenau and Nerval; the musicians Spohr, Schumann, Liszt, Berlioz, Gounod and the parodist Hervé (who stages a comic opera entitled Le petit Faust). In Italy, Arrigo Boito looks at the myth from its reverse side, entitling his work Mefistofele. Painters, too, evoke the image of Faust, the most famous of these being Delacroix
In the twentieth century Faust arrives on the silver screen and Mephisto assumes the features of the actor Emil Jannings in Friedric Murnau's film of 1926. Ten years later, Mephisto becomes an allegory for Nazism in the eyes of the actor who is the protagonist of Klaus Mann's novel Mephisto. In 1949 Gérard Philipe takes on the role of Faust in René Clair's film La beauté du diable.
In the course of the twentieth century, Faust and Mephisto often assume modern dress and biographies: with Laurence Durrel they become Irish; with L. Lee, American; Tommaso Landolfi and Dino Buzzati place them in the Italy of the sixties; Paul Valéry writes Mon Faust, while Michel Butor submits the variations of the legend to the free interpretation of his readers. But the great novel is Doktor Faustus by Thomas Mann, published in 1946: the conquest of power is now represented by artistic power; damnation is replaced by madness.
In the realm of great literature, the myth of Faust leaps from one meaning to another, yielding to the most unpredictable allegories. Faust becomes mingled with other significant characters, in particular Hamlet and Don Juan. On other occasions, as in Splenger's The Sunset of the Occident, he is chosen as the symbol of "western man".
But the myth lives a double life. Faust and Mephisto, his servant-cum-master, continue also to travel within the humble regions of story-telling, amongst pupeteers, and amid the routine of commercial performances in which their story serves as a solid pretext for the exploits of comic characters. In 1697 William Mountfort staged a pantomime The Life and Death of Dr. Faustus in which Harlequin and Scaramouche from the commedia dell'arte appeared. Not long after, in 1723, in a pantomime by John Rich, also in London, Harlequin and Faust became one and the same character.
In this second life, the myth of Faust and Mephisto which had been told so often does not hint at profound meanings, gives no indication of the historical or metaphysical destiny of humankind, does not set against each other the universal principles of Knowledge and Power. In this popular sphere, far from the realms of poetry and literature, the story of Faust and Mephisto continues to be a thick tangle of dramatic knots: an old man who becomes young again; a saintly man who signs a pact with the Devil; a crazy girl in love who, in a prison cell, lulls to sleep the baby she has killed and buried after giving birth in solitude.

A story that is not to be believed
 I must confess that the story of Faust and his Devil has never reached down to my subterranean waters, my questions and obsessions. It has never been like that of Oedipus or Antigone, Christ or Odin.
 But it is the double life of the myth that gives it its power. We can approach Faust and Mephisto in two diametrically opposed ways. We can ask ourselves what their story means to us, now. Or, on the other hand, we can observe them, like the protagonists of a fairy tale which does not involve us but which we still like to recount.
In the last case, it is not its concealed and ever-new meanings that induce me to retell it. It is rather its crude but well-tested hull which enables it to navigate from one epoch or culture to another. Worn smooth by time, held together by joints that are simple yet strong, it is a story which trails in its wake the echoes and aromas of many worlds and epochs. It allows for Disorder which is the pleasure of fantasy. It is not the naive contrast between Good and Evil that enchants us, the fastidious theology, the austere or accommodating morals, but its capacity to fly, like one of those useless iridescent butterflies that we can never domesticate, but that we look on as an unexpected stroke of fortune each time we catch sight of one.
The two different methods by which we can approach the drama of Faust and Mephisto are an example of the way in which we can relate in general to the "classics" and to myths. It is up to us to decide as to whether to believe in them, or not to believe and play with them.
The reality of playing involves rigorous and improvised actions that explore the surface. It sets it in motion, stirring up contrasting waves and allowing it to be transpierced by the craft and art of the actors, their present and past, their irony and prejudices, calculated compositions and fortuituous encounters. The surface's delicate crust cracks open revealing minute sparkling gardens of quicksand that capture images and experiences, thoughts and reflections, both intimate and collective.
Is it possible to be seduced by the dramatic knots of Faust's story, even if we no longer believe in it? It can be a hospitable meeting ground for actors, dancers and musicians from different cultures and traditions who have almost nothing in common. The only thing that unites them is their skill in guiding the attention of the spectators, and the art of liberating their eyes and minds from well-known images and accepted ideas.
What does it mean not to believe in the story of Faust and Mephisto today? And what is it about it that seduces me? This is the question to which I am seaching for an answer with the tools of my craft.