Faust Without Words

Prelude on Stage:

The play tells the novel of Goethe in a singularly emotional way; without words. The story itself is as monumental as it is simple. A highly educated doctor (Wolfram von Bodecker) is „too old to just play“ and „too young to be without ambition“. He sways between hubris and desperation, accuses destiny and invokes demons. His grief is marked by generic humor. In an obscure play between God (Rainer König) and the Devil (Alexander Neander), Faust has to lose nothing less but his soul. While everybody on stage is excessively mocking and dancing around, loosing oneself in clownish finesse, the well-known story continues almost unnoticed, but with an unbroken strength. Faust signs the pact with the Devil, mingles with the crowd, is rejuvenated and falls in love, gets entangled in murder and oblivion, hides out in the mountains and becomes chastened in the end.

Stage director Tom Quaas and the actors outstandingly manage to combine an artificial way of acting with a very human and translucently fragile representation of the characters. Indeed, there is not a single spoken word necessary to make the small and big conflicts of the characters perceptible.

The idea was born when Tom Quaas, inventor and initiator, director and mental father of this dreamy construct, left the Dresden State Theatre in order to study clownery and pantomime at the famous French college „Centre National des Arts du Cirque“. Back home, he fulfilled his lifelong dream. He gathered a group of dancers and puppeteers, mimes and singers around him and confronted the Dresden audience with a rather uncommon style of theatre.

Cast:
Tom Quaas | Katja Langnäse | Alexander Neander | Jana Reiner Jeanne Pascale Schulze | Wolfram von Bodecker | Rainer König | Tim Schreiber | Louis Terver | Rebecca Jefferson | Renat Safiullin | Kati GrasseBernd Sikora | Paula Henke-Quaas