Marlowe Goes Off-Script: The Faustus Project Is the Wildest Ride at This Year’s Fringe

From Edinburgh-based company Half Trick, The Faustus Project features an unrehearsed Fringe performer from another show in the titular role each night. With the original script in hand, each guest actor will give their improvised take on the Marlowe classic whilst the rest of the cast try to cause as much mischievous sabotage as possible.

We spoke to director and performer Caden Scott ahead of the show’s run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

For those unfamiliar with The Faustus Project, how would you describe it in one sentence? 

A different actor takes on the role of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus every night, but the rest of the cast have only one goal: make the show a living hell for them.

What inspired you to turn Marlowe’s classic into a chaotic, semi-improvised experience? 

‘Classical’ theatre, Shakespeare and Marlowe especially, is treated as this monolith: this is a Big Great Play. Here’s the Big Speech. These Lines are Important. Which is counterintuitive, really, since we have evidence that early modern theatre companies would change things on the fly, cut the show short an hour if they were running over, insert and improvise local references, do everything they could to keep it live and current and contemporary to them, just as we still do today. So The Faustus Project is an experiment in bringing the feel of the ‘classic’ show to a contemporary sensibility. Doctor Faustus would have felt incredibly transgressive on the late 16^th century stages, with devils, sensual dances, pyrotechnics and ground-breaking special effects. Now of course, we’re used to all of that in the movies. So we want audiences and performers alike to feel that danger again. 

How much of your role each night is planned—and how much is pure improvisation on your part too? 

We plan for everything we can, but our guest actors all know how to keep us on our toes and give as good as they get. The majority of our planning is either safety-related (our risk assessments are crazy) or deciding which moments are structured and which ones allow for more creative breathing room (for us and our guest.) Some moments are explicitly us saying ‘wait and see what they do next’. The show NEVER goes to plan, and that’s what we love about it. Even the stuff that is planned, we have only had so many chances to try it out with a real guest, so even the pre-planned stuff is super raw. 

How do you balance the madness and comedy with the original’s deeper themes about ambition, ego, and damnation? 

One feeds the other. People walk away from The Faustus Project surprised at how faithful we are to the themes of the original, but all the insane ideas we generate are speaking to either something in the text, or something thematic to do with ambition, theatre, and the soul of the actor. Faustus’s ambition is shared with the actor’s ambition – they both take a great risk to try and achieve something noteworthy with their time. There’s a whole clowns subplot in the full text, which is cut in our version, mainly because Faustus isn’t in any of it it, but also because we ARE the clowns. And the stupid stuff where they have a food fight with the Pope... that’s not us, that’s all Marlowe. I think if Marlowe was writing for the 21^st century it would’ve been basically exactly what we’re doing now. 

What do you enjoy most about performing at the Edinburgh Fringe? 

It’s a festival where all shows are equally worthy. I saw my 2 favourite shows back to back in 2023 on the same day. One was a huge, expansive epic where the 8-strong cast over the course of the show genuinely built a whole Wild West town in the EICC, complete with church, saloon, and railway (Dark Noon). The other was a one man musical version of Dune in the back of a record shop (Dune! The Musical). Couldn’t have been more different in their approach, scale, scope, or budget. Both were life-changing pieces of theatre! So many different disciplines and genres and forms rub up against one another, and being part of that exchange of ideas is why we do what we do. 

What other classic text would you love to adapt?

 Lots of them – hold me back. Half Trick is doing a version of the Pied Piper at Edinburgh Horror Festival this year already. But on top of that, it depends on budget – I’d love to do an immersive version of King Lear set at a teen house party, or a punchdrunk-style Timon of Athens themed masked ball.

The Faustus Project is at Underbelly, Belly Laugh, 31 July - 24 Aug (not 11), 21.05 (22.05). For tickets go to https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/the-faustus-project