Project Faust Exposed

Honours Research Project 2016
Creative Practice Lab, Theatre & Performance, University of New South Wales, Australia
6 – 8 September 2016

Creator / Performer: Sally Blackwood
Co-Performer/ Stage Manager / Technician: Gordon Rymer

PROJECT FAUST EXPOSED invites the audience to experience the first creative development of Project Faust, my new re-imaging of Gounod’s opera Faust (1859) as an opera/ballet hybrid work created as a co-production between Louisville Ballet and Kentucky Opera.

This is a behind-the-scenes account of leading the creative development of Project Faust in southern America in the summer of 2016. It explores the directorial approach and methodology, artistic tensions and pitfalls, and examines the complex and fragile nature of collaboration between opera singers and ballet dancers, revealing their transformation as artists.

This performance presentation exposes the creative process and re-interrogates the work of Project Faust as an opera/ballet work-in-development, using segments of video footage, still photography, collected research material, directorial notes, and the director’s diary entries.

This thesis is a practice-based research project accompanied by a written exegesis.

PROJECT FAUST Creative Development #1
27 June – 22 July 2016, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Kentucky, USA.

DIRECTOR: SALLY BLACKWOOD
Conductor: Joseph Mechavich
Choreographer: Adam Hougland
Ballet Mistress Mikelle Bruzina
Ballet Dancers: Leigh Anne Albrechta, Roger Creel, Kateryna Sellers, Justin Michael Hogan, Ryan Stokes, Helen Daigle.
Opera Singers: Emily Albrink Katz (Marguerite/chorus), Garret Sorrenson (Faust/chorus), Derrick Parker (Devil/chorus), Chad Sloan (Valentin/Chorus

Video excerpts are taken from the creative development showing, Friday 22 July 2016, Louisville Kentucky, USA. Videographers: ©Antonio Pantoja for Kentucky Opera, with additional footage by ©Mike Ford for Louisville Ballet. Photographs are taken from creative development in June-July 2016. Photo credit: ©Sam English for Louisville Ballet

Project Faust is a new opera/ballet work. Project Faust premieres as part of THE BEYOND double bill in March 2018 at the Kentucky Center for the Arts, Louisville Kentucky USA.