FaustIn and out

FaustIn and Out is a «secondary drama» to Goethe’s original version of Faust, and it should only be performed in connection with this classic play. Jelinek radically shifts the perspective on Gretchen’s tragedy, and combines it with the case of the Austrian Joseph Fritzl, who kept his own daughter as a prisoner in his basement for years, fathering several children with her. «The pious but fallen maiden Margarethe, who killed her baby, who had been seduced and abandoned, and who ends up alone in the dungeon, waiting to be executed – this story takes a backseat to the apocalyptic vision of a union, where father, husband, creator, and god blend into one ‘all-sustaining, all-encompassing’ entity… FaustIn and Out raises its voice from the underground, but prefers the basement to being led away by Heinrich. It wants to be heard as well as to be ignored, wants to be present and absent at the same time. It’s a woman’s fate, turned into a play.» (Roland Koberg in the 2011 yearbook of Theater heute)