Faust

Throughout his lifetime Goethe worked on his magnum opus FAUST, the only one of his works he called a “tragedy”. It stands there mysterious and shining, on an epic scale – a seemingly endless series of scenes and reflections. What holds this tragedy together at its very core? There is Faust, eternally restless, who regards the world as his prey and time as something to borrow against. There is Mephisto, the opposite principle – literally in Faust’s shadow. There is Gretchen, innocence and beauty in the face of ruin. And there is the light that falls through all the cracks in fate. Most of the tragedy takes place in the darkness of the night. This darkness is repeatedly torn apart by fire and signs of light – like the flash of a photograph. In 1928 the Russian photographer Alexander Rodchenko described photography as a “battle between eternity and the moment” and went on to say: “With its emergence, there can no longer be any general immutable concept of a likeness. A man is not just one entity, he has many forms and is dialectical.” “Moment, stay a while.” Kay Voges directs FAUST as this very battle and together with live photographer Marcel Urlaub he transforms the stage into both a space of light and a darkroom.