"Dr Faustus" - Marlowe (10) (Ideas & progress)

The first half of this lesson was spent discussing ideas we had for any of the play. These ideas could be about a certain section of the play or about the play in general. Our ideas were as follows:

• The play could end with Faustus shutting a book/laptop and panting heavily - this would suggest that the whole story was his imagination.
• Suicide at the end - this could express the power of the mind.
• Faustus could be in a coma and wake up at the end - (Start in the real word --> When he delves into necromancy and "disappears" he could be in a coma --> he then returns before the conversation with Valdes and Cornelius --> Murdock and Scholar enter --> He then dies at the end)
• An old computer could be on Faustus' desk at the beginning of the play and at the end of the play there could be a tablet or MacBook - this would be to show that time has passed.
• Sand timers could be used at various places throughout the play - to signify to Faustus that time is running out for him. The whole idea of time is quite significant in this play as it suggests that everyone's time will come one day, but it is what you do with your time that will determine what happens to you.
• The conversation between Faustus and Valdes and Cornelius (at the beginning of the play) could be on the telephone - this would enable us to have the technique of split screen. This could be symbolical as the divide referred to throughout the play is between the Good Angel and the Evil Angel so having Faustus on one end and the other two on the other side could portray Faustus as evil and the others as good (As they themselves haven't been tempted to give in to the seven deadly sins).
• Good Angel could be presented by white light and Evil Angel could be presented by red light - white has connotations of innocence and purity, whilst red has connotations of anger.
• Charlie suggested that Good Angel could stand by Faustus whilst Evil Angel stands on the other side of the stage space, Evil Angel could throw things towards Faustus whilst Good Angel could try to stop them - Evil Angel wants Faustus to be tempted by Valdes and Cornelius.

In the second part of this lesson we began staging our version of this play from the beginning. We didn't block the chorus parts but we staged the actual physical characters. We haven't worked out where the Good and Evil Angel will be positioned yet, as we are not sure whether we can get scaffolding or not for them to be standing on. Ollie blocked his opening monologue and we worked out our duologue section. Our duologue section actually went rather well for a first attempt. At first we were a little bit static as we weren't used to performing in traverse, but we got used to it and added some movement in. We had a nice moment where Faustus got annoyed at Murdock, so he walked around me and then off to a side, whilst my character remained, rolled their eyes and then went after Faustus. Afterwards, we moved on to the phone call between Valdes, Cornelius and Faustus. Faustus remained by his desk on the phone. At the other end of the traverse, Valdes and Cornelius are based around a table, on which is a speaker phone. By having a speaker phone, Robert and James are not restricted to one space, thus allowing them to move more freely. Moreover, they can use the mute button to show when they want Faustus to hear things and when they are speaking "aside".

Next lesson, we shall run what we staged and hopefully complete the sin section as well.