Presented in collaboration with the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (BMCM+AC), Anam Cara Theatre Company will produce the beat-era satire Faust Foutu April 15 through May 1.
Roughly translated from French as Faust Screwed, Faust Foutu was influenced by Faust, Goethe’s tragic play in which a scholar named Faust calls upon the devil and implicitly sells his soul in exchange for knowledge.
“It is true that the classic Faust is the inspiration for this character and this play, but this is a very loose adaptation,” says Ryan Madden, codirector with Kim Hartley. “The play is nonlinear and filled with vivid and poetic language along with shifting settings and characters, which include Faust, Faust’s lovers, and the devil.”
The adoptive parents of poet and playwright Robert Duncan were theosophists. “Theosophists believe that nature is filled with ‘signs’ that, if read correctly, contain the divine truth,” says Kim, who serves as dramaturge for the production. “The Faust story is fundamentally about the quest for knowledge … and there seem to be elements of theosophist ideas present in Faust Foutu.”
The playwright briefly attended Black Mountain College in 1938, later teaching there in 1956. He was involved in the San Francisco art scene during the 1950s and ’60s. The play is being produced in conjunction with an exhibit at BMCM+AC titled Ray Spillenger: Rediscovery of a Black Mountain Painter that runs through May 21. Ray was an abstract painter who studied at Black Mountain College during the summer of 1948.
The production takes place at Toy Boat Community Art Space, 101 Fairview Road in Asheville, April 15–16 at 8 p.m.; and at BMCM+AC, 56 Broadway Street in downtown Asheville, April 22–23, and 30, at 8 p.m. and May 1 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $15 in advance, $18 at the door, and $10 for BMCM+AC members and students for BMCM+AC performances only. For more, visit anamcaratheatre.org and blackmountaincollege.org.
