"Dr Faustus" - Marlowe (23) (Page 11 - 17)

"A Devil woman": In this lesson, we ran from the beginning of Act Two (page 11). As Rhiannon is not in the piece anymore, I have to be the "devil woman, sexy and seductive". Therefore, on page 13, when Lewis clicks, I have to walk the whole traverse towards Ollie and the caress his upper body with my hands. We go to kiss but we freeze as Ollie answers Mephistopheles question. We then sit on the desk and I give him a massage. The massage shows that Faustus is not stressed and also shows that he gets everything that he wants - he has given in to the sins.

"The Heavens": We have now created a physical theatre section to show Mephistopheles and Faustus travelling through time and space, until they reach the Heavens. Our piece begins with Lewis standing on the central block and Ollie on the lower block in front of him. The rest of us kneel in the gap between the four outer boxes. This shows the level of status, with Mephistopheles on the highest level, then Faustus, and then the rest of us. We do a little trust fall with Ollie, where he stumbles back but the rest of us had gone round to stand behind him by this point, and we support his back and get him to stand up again. This is to represent that this journey is dangerous and foreshadows Faustus' gruesome end for having gotten involved with necromancy. We knew when we first decided we were going to have a movement section here, that we would need to include a lot of fast movement to show him travelling; however, we then discussed having different historical events as well to show him travelling through time as well. As soon as we separate after doing the trust fall, we move to the corners of the traverse (whilst Ollie and Lewis go to one end of the traverse to look at the projection of stars and space). Once at these corners, we mime a sword-fights down the traverse (to represent battles during the past). We decided to do this down the traverse to ensure that all audience members end up seeing a battle. Faustus them stands on the centre stage block, and we hand him our swords, to show Faustus gaining power and giving in to the sin of Wrath. We all have individual things to create the sense of movement (e.g. Charlie does turns) - I do stag leaps to represent the animals in Africa when poaching wasn't as much as an issue. Later I do a medieval courting dance with Faustus (to show time changing and to add another era to this piece). Whenever we are standing still, we use a ribbon to swirl around us to create a sense of movement. To end our physical theatre piece, Faustus and Mephistopheles stand up on the middle block, whilst the rest of us lay on the outer four blocks across each other, as if we are completely content and satisfied.

What we have left to do:

• record Lucifer's lines as voice overs - using choral speaking and editing it to sound distorted
• complete the sin section movement, and rehearse the sin section with the completed track
• sort the projections for the piece
• everyone learn their lines
• run the entire piece in costume and with sound and lighting
• rehearse with all props