Урок Фауста

One-man play "The Lesson of Faust"

September 17 · 7:00 PM · Chamber Stage of the International Center for the Performing Arts

A one-man show by actor and performer Yevhen Bal based on Johann Wolfgang Goethe's "Faust" is the artist's personal journey to a work that once changed his own life.

As a teenager, Yevhen Bal read Faust, and years later he returned to it as an actor and researcher. In the play, he tells not only about Goethe's hero, but also about the real Faust, the medieval legend, the history of the work's creation, and its numerous translations. The classic story about the thirst for knowledge, human ambition, and the deal with the devil here receives a personal, ironic, and unexpected reading.

In two and a half hours, one actor goes through about a dozen characters, changing them with minimal means — wigs, mustaches, lipstick, and his own plastic surgery. The viewer becomes a participant in an imaginary journey through time and space, where a lecture on "Faust" gradually turns into a theatrical performance.

The play was created and rehearsed during blackouts, so its stage form provides for maximum mobility: the scenery fits into two Nova Poshta boxes, and the play can be performed both in full theater light and by the light of a battery-powered construction lantern.

The premiere took place on August 28, 2024 in Odessa - on the 275th anniversary of Goethe's birth.

Idea and execution by Yevhen Bal.

Duration — 2 hours 30 minutes with intermission.

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