Romeo Castellucci’s Faust, which transcends literature and politics

In an age of alchemists who dabble in a variety of fields, from science to politics, from war to business, the figure of Faust seems highly relevant: he who pursues knowledge at the cost of losing everything, even himself, beginning with his soul, which he has pledged as a pledge to the devil himself.

Romeo Castellucci, one of the most important contemporary playwrights, who founded Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio in 1981 alongside Claudia Castellucci and Chiara Guidi and was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by the Venice Biennale in 2013, is bringing the production Faust to the Teatro Argentina in Rome (until 18 October) as part of the Romaeuropa Festival. Fatto, non detto, with music by Scott Gibbons, a composer and leading figure in dark ambient and micromusic who has been collaborating with Romeo Castellucci and Socìetas since 1998, composing music for, among others, Tragedia Endogonidia and La Divina Commedia.

Romeo Castellucci’s work stands apart from political controversies and rhetoric, yet the director is well aware that Faust possesses an ontological political significance that cannot be dismissed, all the more so in an age when technology is fully revealing its religious function rather than merely serving a practical purpose.

This production of Faust thus follows the sensational and highly acclaimed Don Giovanni, which was staged in 2021.

Whereas Don Giovanni pursued his desires, revealing a vivid, Enlightenment-era vitality, here Faust instead expresses the contradiction of an age that claims to be and is described as scientific, yet which instead displays a psychological dependence on technology, to the extent that one can already glimpse how, in the future, humanity itself may come to be regarded as subordinate to an artificial intelligence unbound by the guidelines and obligations theoretically imposed and regulated by humankind.

Romeo Castelucci’s Faust thus transcends literature itself; here, the word on the page immediately becomes an act, reconnecting with its original, more popular and concrete nature. Existence and, at the same time, ‘doing’ – understood as action – precede every idea and every theory. What Castelucci appears to be pursuing is a utopia of the possible, or at the very least of ‘doing’ that requires patience and audacity, steadfastness and moderation.

Gérard Bayle, now well into his nineties and a central figure on stage beyond his actual role, becomes a guide and an absolute point of reference – even in life, as Castellucci himself suggests. Here, strength makes its appearance and power is immediately laid bare. Within this framework, Castellucci explores the contradiction whereby, on the one hand, he thinks through machines – which he still describes as primitive – and, on the other, denounces the abuse of an artificial world that is no longer unrecognisable but only vaguely perceptible.

Between reality and imagination there now lies an unprecedented filter, an obstacle created and staged by technology that prevents us from grasping, within reality, a time and a fact that were once original and recognisable. Mephisto, who was both a trickster and a satyr, now compels us to re-imagine where the world has already been imagined by others. We thus live as children of a new era that seems to have forgotten us, locked away in a room that for too long was mistaken for a refuge and which now reveals itself to be a prison.

What remains of the artist? And what of the last offspring of a distorting century that rejects imagination and elevates reality to the sole point of reference, even when reality itself becomes an explicit and facile falsification?

Faust. Fatto, non detto could well prove to be Romeo Castellucci’s most political work to date, as it captures not only the intelligence, urgency and necessity of politics, but also the fragility of our perceptions.

Giacomo Giossi