Doctor Faust

For dramaturgical reasons, it is impossible for a marionette stage to appropriately reproduce Goethe's Faust. Attempts to adapt the poetry for the puppet stage by excerpts or shortening it would not only be an almost impossible experiment, but also a disrespect to great poetry. An attempt had to be made to obtain a concise redesign for the puppets. The text was edited in 1980 by Toni Gruber, who had already worked as an author for the Tölzer Marionetten in the past. Stylistically, the language of free Knittelverse was chosen. This was solely for economic and accentuation reasons and was in no way intended to be an aping of Goethe's style.

The sound recording used here is also from 1980 and is an irretrievable sound document with the speaker ensemble of the Tölzer Marionette Theater at the time. Oskar Paul, who designed and built the characters and stage set in an unmistakable way, can be heard in this recording as a resident of Saturn. During the digitization and restoration of the original magnetic tape, small details were optimized and a new song was selected for Gretchen.