scored for violin, double bass, flute, trombone, harp and accordeon 

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duration 90 minutes 

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Faust begins from a fundamental paradox: knowing everything and yet remaining empty. Despite her total knowledge of the world, an immeasurable void yawns open, one that cannot be filled. The music opens in a state of existential fatigue, in which learning, explaining, and understanding have lost their promise. What once offered direction now feels like ballast.

 

We wear away our youth on school benches, learning what life is supposed to be, only to wander lost through a reality that offers little grip. The adult world Faust encounters acts just as erratically and impulsively. The music moves between irony and despair, between order and disintegration. Knowledge proves not to be a compass, but merely an accumulation of facts without direction.

 

In her desperate search for answers, Faust allows herself to be seduced by the Devil. Together they set out on a quest through everything life has to offer. In exchange for her soul, Faust tastes lust, love, power, life, and death. The music grows more extreme and physical, at times seductive, at times violent.

 

Far more music was composed than ultimately found its way into the performance. The work offers neither moral judgment nor a definitive answer, but rather a layered reflection on knowledge, desire, and the persistent human question of how an inner emptiness might ever truly be filled.

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Made by: Paul Contryn, Koen De Graeve, Greet Jacobs, Joris Van den Brande, Ariane van Vliet, Michiel Delanghe and Mathias Coppens 

Actors: Koen De Graeve, Greet Jacobs, Joris Van den Brande, Ariane van Vliet
Text: Joris Van den Brande
Composition Mathias Coppens
Conductor: Michiel Delanghe
Musicians: deCompagnie

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Costume: Lotte Boonstra and Ruby Renteurs 

Pupets: Paul Contryn and Lotte Boonstra - assistent atelier Rifka Das and Florence De Vocht 

Light and technic :Aaron Bruyninckx 

Audio en technic: Dieter Lambrechts 

Scenography: Stéphane Vloebergh, Aaron Bruyninckx and Paul Contryn 

Producer: Noor de Graaf​

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Faust was commissioned by Lazarus/Arsenaal, De Maan and premiered at Schouwberg Mechelen.