20 - Strehler's Faust in performance

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 Strehler

A 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.