Double - Dr Faustus - Blog 5 - 16/05/16

Today we discussed how we would make our production of Dr Faustus different from any other production and got to work acting out more scenes.

We started off by reading through the script from the beginning and making notes on different parts and what we can do with them to make them different; this led on to us discussing the future of the play and whether we should stick to the storyline or adapt it.

Below are a few of our ideas linking to individual scenes and the whole play itself:

• For our scene between Faustus, Valdes and Cornelius, we were toying with the idea of having them call each other and them be at opposite ends of the traverse. We said we can use this throughout which best help show the transition of time after Faustus being missing for 24 years. We could have them calling Faustus on a conference phone at the beginning but at the end they can call him via Skype on a tablet/laptop.
• For the scenes involving the Good and Evil Angel's, Charlie thought it would be a great idea to have them throwing messages at Faustus from afar and they read the messages that they're throwing. However, Lorna thought it would be more clever for each of the angels to use miming puppetry in order to control Faustus. This allows them to control him physically as well as mentally. I then went on to suggest that as the two angels play the different sides of Faustus' conscience, they should be conjoined in some way, whether that be by interlocked hands, or locked arms whilst back-to-back.
• We then discussed changing how Faustus disappears and the sort of stuff he gets involved with. We mentioned that we could swap his obsession with necromancy with an obsession for drugs. This meant we could change his disappearance into a coma and he feels as if he's disappeared from everyone but only mentally not physically.
• With the coma idea in mind, we thought that if Faustus were to fall into his coma just as he summons Mephistopheles, he would come out of it as Valdes says, "Faustus? Is that you? You have been gone so long." Having the pair by his side at a hospital can really wow our audience with our change of direction. However, as Mephistopheles still appears later, it would show how Faustus' dreams in his coma have messed with his mental state and he can't distinguish reality from his fantasy. We agreed to take this another step forward and try to show the audience that Faustus' descent into hell isn't through being damned by Lucifer but by him losing the capacity to control his own thoughts and after spiralling into a madness of Mephistopheles and demons and infernos does he finally end it all and commit himself to hell.
• We also thought it would be cool to have a motif involving an hourglass which Meph will carry with him throughout his 24 years of serving Faustus. This symbolises Faustus' time continually running out.

We then started running different scenes involving Faustus, Murdock, Valdes, and Cornelius.