FaustX

2025 marks the 250th anniversary of Goethe's arrival in Weimar. Reason enough for Kunstfest
to approach both parts of Goethe's Weimar masterpiece for the first time since 1999. The festival opens with the world premiere of “FaustX” by Cape Town director, playwright and installation artist Brett Bailey (born 1967), who is at home at all major theatre festivals worldwide. Bailey’s free adaptation of “Faust II”, created for Weimar as an international co-production, begins where “Faust I” ends. Bound by a pact with Mephisto to forfeit his soul if he ever finds inner peace, Dr Faust meddles in the economies of the global south and plays war games on the fringes of the EU. He implements grand plans for technological expansion to master nature, society and – like a tech oligarch – distant planets. Feeling like a vagabond in a world in which he has no home, Faust is forever on the move, driven always to push beyond frontiers in his hunger for intensity of experience and – ultimately – power. Often with tragic results… Performed by an irreverent troupe of masked South African performers, Bailey tells a visually powerful, surreal and haunting story about human striving and temptation, bad deals and uncontrollable ambition that is as relevant in today's fragmented world as it was when it was written.