It is a mammoth project that professional theaters hardly ever dare to tackle: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s “Faust II” is one of the rarely performed works, due to its complexity and its sheer length. The initiators of the Faust Festival in Ismaning were not deterred by this. From July 18th to 23rd, high school students at the Rudolf Steiner School will bring the whole of Faust, i.e. Part I and Part II, to the stage – over a total of four days.
Klaus Weißinger, teacher at the Ismaninger Waldorf School and himself a doctorate in German studies, initiated the festival. In 2014 it took place for the first time, in 2019 it was repeated and now in 2022 the third festival. A large theater project at the end of the school career is a tradition at the Waldorf school, the young people deal with the material correspondingly intensively and the demands on the dramaturgical implementation are correspondingly high. Weißinger is not surprised that the Faust story still fascinates young people today, more than 200 years after Goethe published the first part of his tragedy. “Faust is a work that illuminates very central human themes: What is man, what is the world? How can I act in the world? How can I deal with evil? These questions are incredibly modern and still relevant.” , he says.
Some of the topics from the second part are highly topical
In addition to the twelfth graders of the Ismaningen Waldorf School, which will perform the first, more well-known part of “Faust”, three other Waldorf schools from Germany will perform. The schools from Rosenheim, Oldenburg and Saar-Hunsrück staged “Faust II” in three parts. While the first part of the work focuses more on the “small world” of the individual, Faust II illuminates the big world and its connections. “It’s about a financial crisis, an economic crisis, there is inflation – all of these are highly topical issues that concern us right now,” says Weißinger. “Elsewhere, Faust is engaged in land reclamation by building dykes. That’s also a topic that concerns us today – how do we shape new land and thus our social coexistence? Let’s take a look at Johanneskirchen, where urban planning is currently discussing exactly that .”
The topics should not only have an effect on the stage, but also give impetus to discussions. Last but not least, the festival should bring the students from the different schools together, give them space to get to know each other and to talk to each other. Lectures complement the program, but also culinary themed stands, for example in the style of “Auberbachs Keller”.
The Faust Festival 2022 will take place at the Rudolf Steiner School in Ismaning until Saturday, July 23. Booking options for tickets and the program in detail can be found at www.faust-festival.de.