Kansas Faust

An Adaptation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part One in Two Acts with Original Music by Alan Cancelino.

This play is set in the contemporary Midwest, where Hank Faust is a frustrated professor at a small, rural college. Mephistopheles offers Faust a pact with the devil, in which Faust will be able to indulge his senses, and regain his youth. Faust agrees, and Mephistopheles spirits him to the witch's kitchen, where Faust becomes young again. The first woman he sees is Margaret, whom he swears he will seduce. What begins as blind lust turns into obsession and finally, love. Faust gives Margaret a potion to make her mother sleep, so that Faust can come to her in the night. The potion kills Margaret's mother. Margaret's brother comes upon Faust and Mephistopheles in the street beneath Margaret's window as they serenade her. Faust kills the brother in a duel. He and Mephistopheles flee, and Mephistopheles successfully distracts Faust from asking too many questions about Margaret. It isn't until the day set for her execution that Faust learns that Margaret gave birth to their child, and in a distraught emotional state, killed the baby. Faust makes Mephistopheles take him to Margaret's cell. He begs her to come away with him. But she is too aware of her responsibility, in one way or another, for the deaths of her mother, brother and child. Margaret recognizes Mephistopheles for the devil that he is, and rejects Faust. As Mephistopheles and Faust flee, angelic voices tell Margaret that her soul is saved.

History:
The playwright received a 2004 Edward F. Albee Foundation Fellowship to work on this play. "Kansas Faust" received a staged reading by the Milk Can Theatre Company in December 2004, directed by Julie Balzer.

Download a PDF sample scene.

Pictured actors are- Alex Cherington, Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum, Daryl Lathon, Michael Raimondi, Kirsten Walsh, Cotton Wright.