Our Dr Faustus Concept

For out performance of Dr Faustus we are changing up the over all concept of the show, but with keeping the original text. Our follows Faustus as he thrives for more within the music industry. He is a DJ who wants to get fame from his art. In this he sells his soul to the devil, who is shaped as a 'hot young groupie' and he then gets 24 years to enjoy his life and have fun.


Over the years he go a bit wild and plays some tricks on lords, royalty and citizens. When the 24 years are up he then gets his life taken away and is dragged to hell. Although over the whole play we follow the original narrative, we have changed some of the character to fit our concept. 

Where Dr Faustus is a well known play, and has a very well known storyline, it is very open to changes and updating with the content that is in it. One of the main thing that we have changed is the overall concept which is about the music industry and the character of Dr Faustus being a world renouned DJ. This I think works as a concept, as it brings it bang up to date with an contempuary audeince. Giving them something to link to, and bring into their own lives.

Within our concept we have also changed some smaller details in the show, so being different characters, one that was a major change was the popes character, who we changed into a music producer figure, who follows simular attributes of Simon Cowell. This was a drastic change from the original performance, which not only linked and carryed through our themes yet added something esle to a scene that we could play off of.

Another scene that was changed would be the seven deadly sins scene, where words were changed in the script to add another element to our concept. For example during the Gluttony speech words were changed to popular fast food chains, this added some comedic elements to this character.

However I think the most significant change that was given to our concept was the use of recorded music, from sound effects to music tracks. Our production of Dr Faustus was highly reliant on the use of music, and we used it in almost every scene and scene transition. Some songs would help with the narrative and others are their to give. A break from the dialogue. I would label our use of music as our biggest adaption as it is far from anything that could have been done in the original performance, and that why I think It's important to do so as now in theatre we have the ability to use lots of different mediums to create a good production, rather than just our body's and vocals.