The famous German writer Goethe worked on it for almost sixty years fista work divided into two plays, published in 1808 and 1832.
Some two centuries later, the playwright Florent Siaud devoted six years of his life to revising what is considered one of the foundations of Germanic literature.
The result of his work is called If you want light, a production that will be shown at the Prospero Theater, in Luxembourg in May and in Paris in October.
“Before I started, I never imagined having the physical resources to last that long,” admits the director. But it’s a gift of life. During this time marked by COVID-19, we have seen deaths, births and separations in the team’s entourage, which means we carry within us a kind of collective consciousness that has been conveyed in writing.”
An international quilt
It must be said that the Franco-Quebecois did not simplify the task by entrusting the rewrite of this classic to thirteen authors from Quebec, Madagascar, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Lebanon, Benin and Haiti. These feathers therefore had the task of creating the twelve panels of the narrative skeleton conceived by Florent Siaud.
“Everyone reread what the others had laid and had to take that into account when revising their first version,” he says. Everyone worked with their uniqueness, their vision while being influenced by the group.
Sales are also international. Quebecers Francis Ducharme and Sophie Cadieux play Faust and Marguerite, respectively, while the other main character, Mephisto, is played by Frenchwoman Yacine Sif El Islam.
A contemporary version
Florent Siaud has long dreamed of staging Faust.
“When talking to the cinemas, we always stumbled across the adaptation, the rewrite,” he says. So I understood I had to find the most personal way to deliver that.”
The result? Faust is an oncologist in a Paris hospital who falls in love with one of his terminally ill patients. Despite his therapeutic relentlessness, he is unable to save her, leading to remorse that takes him on an odyssey to other lands with Mephisto.
“We worked with nurses and oncologists to bring this production to life,” says the theater man.
He found it very interesting to see 19th-century themes in the original work, such as the crisis of science and the rising waters, from a new perspective. “Our creation is a story with a very clear narrative,” he says. It’s a great epic to devour in one sitting, like a TV series!”
if you want light presents itself in the Prospero Theater from 1ah until March 11th.