At times in our lives we may wish to make a “Faustian” bargain, usually a deal that may benefit us in some fashion, but if taken, it harms our moral integrity. “Faustian” derives from a man known as Faust who, according to the German legend, sells his soul to the Devil in order to gain his greatest desires. One early iteration of the legend is Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus (c. 1604). While Marlowe is a contemporary of William Shakespeare, his Doctor Faustus tackles a variety of topics untouched by the Bard.
Premiering Friday April 1st, the What You Will Shakespeare Company will present Doctor Faustus with some significant changes to the traditional script. For one, the play is set in a modern period. For another, Mephistopheles’ gender is female instead of male. For a third, the play no longer presents a clear-cut portrayal of Heaven and Hell. In order to find out more about this production of Doctor Faustus, I sat down with the actors Megan Scharlau (Mephistopheles) and Erik Wessel (Doctor Faustus) along with first-time director Ashish Valentine.
—
Smile Politely: What has been your favorite part about being Mephistopheles?
Megan Scharlau: I really like playing devilish, just kind of eerie, characters. Mephistopheles has that, but also has more depth because there is a lot of confliction there. Mephistopheles is a very rich character with how Ash wants the role done. I’m really happy and I’m excited and it’s nice playing roles that usually only men get.
SP: Why make Mephistopheles female?
Ashish Valentine: So, part of that decision was that I really wanted some of the characters to be gender neutral in terms of casting. Because I thought that, there are some shows that lend themselves to specific genders, but this is one where the struggle is more based on wants as opposed to characters’ gender. I wanted the best person in each role. And also I thought it would be really interesting to gender Mephistopheles because of the way Faustus approaches Mephistopheles. Faustus is, like, a misogynist, kind of commanding this woman…
Erik Wessel: It’s a lot of “sweet Mephistopheles” and “gentle Mephistopheles.”
AV: Exactly.
EW: That sort of takes on an interesting meaning.
AV: Right. I wanted Mephistopheles to be a woman to react against that misogyny especially since the way that we’re doing Mephistopheles in this play is that Mephistopheles goes on a parallel trajectory to Faustus. Faustus starts the play very naive. Gradually, he becomes much more jaded and cynical. I wanted Mephistopheles to mirror that character progression by becoming much more regretful and introspective.
SP: Did you find playing Mephistopheles in this way challenging at all?
MS: I mean… It’s acting. It’s taking on a different person. I think it’s more fun than anything. I would say the play itself is more challenging than a lot of (William) Shakespeare because it’s not as well known. Marlowe’s language is slightly different, but it touches on things that Shakespeare doesn’t really do in his works. So, yeah, it is a nice challenge. Yeah, it is a nice break from the usual.
SP: What has been your favorite part about playing the role of Doctor Faustus?
EW: Oh my gosh, yeah, so many things. I like the way Faustus uses words because he uses them for a lot of different things. He thinks out loud but he’ll also use them to deflect and he will also try to fight people by flooding them with clever quips. And… I really like the way that he can fool everybody including himself into thinking whatever he wants them to think. I like how flighty he is in his decision making that he will make a decision and then he will change his mind and then he will change his mind again. It gives you a lot of chances to do interesting things.
And I just found Faustus to be an interesting character personally. I’m not religious and, it was interesting to play one of the most notable, not-religious, atheist characters in fiction. Faustus clings to his non-belief even in the face of overwhelming evidence that there are supernatural things going on around him and that there are rules. That there is a God that you must you be repentant to and he just won’t do it.
SP: What have you found the most challenging?
EW: I like to play characters that are sort of darker versions of myself that have things that I can relate to and then kind of go off the deep end with them. I found that I really like him because there is… As much as a twisted, screwed up, and ultimately, somebody who is deserving of their own demise, as much as that type of a person he is, Faustus is very relatable. The stuff he goes through is very relatable, the situations he’s in. I found all of these little parallels to life like all of these little deals we make that we would rather not make, though not as extreme as this. There are just a lot of little things that are just really fun to play with in this character.
SP: What do you find interesting about this famous scholar and student?
AV: In the first time reading the play, you think he’s interested in knowledge, but then you find that he’s not really that interested in knowledge. He’s really more interested in the appearance of knowledge. So, the first monologue of the play is him going through law, philosophy, medicine, and just burning through these subjects and apparently mastering them and being frustrated, which is why he ultimately turns to the dark arts. Because he’s mastered everything else. But then if you look at the essays where people look into the quotes that he pulls from the books that he’s basically tearing apart, he doesn’t actually understand any of the books that he is critiquing.
SP: Can you give an example?
AV: Like Faustus critiques the Bible, and he has this line where he reads, “the award of sin is death.” And so he reasons, “well, if the award of sin is death, then we must sin and so consequently we die.” He’s trying to point out this paradox where everyone sins and the award of sin is death therefore everybody dies so the system is inherently unfair. The quote that he’s rephrasing, however, continues on with: “But confessing leads to the forgiveness of sins.” So, if Faustus had actually read that quote completely, he wouldn’t have had that argument. There are a lot of moments in the text where he is interacting with books, but he’s not actually consuming them or the information within them.
Another example is when Mephistopheles gives him a book with a bunch of spells in it, and instead of actually going through them and looking at the spells, he keeps asking for more books. Because he’s not really interested in learning, he’s more interested in being seen as knowing things.
SP: Pre-interview, we were discussing the setting choice for this production. You said you didn’t want to go completely technological and make a statement about our digital age through Faustus, but you were saying that you were trying to keep it more ambiguous. How are you doing that? With costumes I presume?
AV: The costuming that we’re working with is anywhere between almost modern to Victorian. There are a bunch of comic relief characters who are dressed much more like people that walked out of a (Charles) Dickens novel. One wears a top hat, one wears a flat cap, suspenders, that kind of deal… So basically, the reason why I wanted to make it modern, other than the fact that aesthetically I wanted a change, is that I felt that the struggle that Faustus goes through is a very modern struggle. It’s basically an identity crisis. It’s basically a struggle that everybody goes through when they grow up where you have to make a deal with the devil. You have to compromise parts of your identity in order to fit in or in order to do what you need to do to succeed. I felt that by making it more modern, people would see it and see themselves in Faustus.
SP: What types of themes are you looking at visually? I noticed some performances do a traditional color scheme of Faustus in black, the angels in white, and the demons in red. Are you also skewing away from that visual color scheme?
AV: We’re deliberately skewing away from that, too. The way that people often do the play is that everyone has their divine role, and they stick to that so the devils are red and the angels are white. The way the play is usually done there is a good angel and an evil angel that are the archetypal angel/devil at his shoulder. What I really wanted to do is radically destabilize the play from that kind of cosmic order so demons can be good and angels can be bad. There is no unifying moral authority. It’s just that everyone is trying to do what they want to do or what they think is right.
SP: What other changes should the audience anticipate?
AV: The play begins and ends with a chorus which is an independent entity. We’re changing that so certain characters take those lines. So, Mephistopheles starts the play whereas normally the Chorus starts the play. Instead of having separate good angel and evil angel, we’re actually having one person dressed exactly like how Faustus is dressed and we’re cleaving his face into two halves. There is a human half and a demon half. The credit is actually Faustus’ soul (played by Logan Weeter). Basically, Weeter comes and completely changes his performance depending on the lines that he is delivering as Faustus is deliberating in front of him. So, it’s not necessarily like voices from on high telling Faustus to do these things. The play is much more refocused to focus on his internal conflict and the motivations of the various characters in more of an amoral setting.
We actually made a change to the seven deadly sins, too. Normally, the way that is put on is kind of farcical. Seven demons are summoned and they each do this humorous routine. How we’re doing it is that Faustus’ best friend Wagner (played by Kevin Gomez) is kind of a counterpoint to Mephistopheles. Wagner tries to keep Faustus human, and Mephistopheles, at least at first, is pushing Faustus to be more demonic. We changed the play so that the seven deadly sins possess Wagner in front of Faustus. In between each possessions, Wagner begs Faustus to help him and to save him. Gomez came up with a different performance for each sin.
So, the changes fit in with our idea of destabilizing the play from this traditional cosmic order of angels and demons. Our interpretation blurs the lines so it’s more gray. Also, the changes make Faustus’ trajectory darker and more defined.
———
You can see this high-concept and modern version of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus on Friday April 1st and Saturday April 2nd. Doors open at 7:30 pm and performances start at 8 p.m. Tickets are $7 at the door at the University Place Christian Church (at 403 E. Stoughton Street, Champaign, IL). More information is available on the What You Will Shakespeare’s Facebook page.
Images provided by the company via their facebook page.
About Sarah Keim:
Sarah Keim is a contributing writer for Smile Politely’s Arts section. She’s a bit of recluse on social media, but you might bump into her out in the wilds of C-U. Frequent sightings occur at comic book shops, goat farms, and the movie theater.
About Sarah Keim: