Doctoral Supervisor Faust

Professor Margarete Faust has dedicated her life to university research. Entering the later years of her working life, she has finally been made a full professor and is revered by her students as an icon in the field of gender studies. She has long been a thorn in the side of the right-wing government in Germany, and when word gets out that Faust has helped a student get an abortion abroad, a scandal erupts that destroys her career. Mephisto uses this moment to remind Faust of the sensual, physical dimension of life and introduces her to Karim. Karim is gay, and needs a residence permit and Faust as a supervisor for his PhD project. Faust, erotically drawn to Karim and lustfully triggered by Mephisto, enters an ambiguous sphere of seduction, conflicts of interest, and transgression, in which the power relations develop a momentum of their own and muddy the relations between victim and perpetrator.

In her first play, Fatma Aydemir examines the classic themes of Goethe’s Faust from a feminist perspective, ruthlessly interrogating two contemporary trends: the personality cult of emancipatory movements and the danger of right-wing populism.