Doctor Faustus

TON und KIRSCHEN calls itself a vagrant theater. Their houses on wheels during the warm season travel all the countries of the world. In the winter they park on a small piece of land on a lake in a suburb of Berlin. Here, among the cherry trees, the sounds of their work have been born for almost ten years, under the same leadership of its founders, David Johnston and Margarete Biereye, for­merly leading actors at the Futsbarn Theater.

They have crossed half the world and won many prizes in France, Germany and Poland. Much has been written and said about them as their shows are very visual and poetic, simultaneously grotesque and lyrical. All the styles are mixed there – from elegy to clowning, all the theatrical approaches: masks, dolls, noise and music. They are full of surprising actors able to create an atmosphere of nearly intimate trust with the audience in the conditions of the street.

In 1999 the theater presented Marlowe’s play, “The Tragic History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faust”. “We chose this piece”, says David Johnston, “because in it, as in the plays of Shakespeare, the human world comes into contact with the world of the spirits and mixes with it”. The clash of the simple human soul of Faust character who actually existed – with the magic power of Mephistofeles is a battle between good and evil. God and the Devil, the interaction between Light and Darkness – all are brought out in the performance, and the unexpected atmosphere it creates transfixes the audience.