I might live to regret this but in an effort to re-energise my brain, I have signed up for another course of study with The Open University. I have already completed a BSc (Open) degree which focused on technology and social sciences, graduating in 2002, and meanwhile I've done a course on music technology which I didn't particularly enjoy - too much maths and physics! I also tried a taster course in astronomy which served mainly to show that I could never really get beyond the basics in that field. So I've gone for the Humanities this time, starting with the Arts foundation course AA100 'The Arts Past and Present'. The course gets under way this weekend. Loads of books to read!
The course includes the study of Christopher Marlowe’s play Dr Faustus. Coincidentally, the Watford Palace Theatre is touring a production of this play, sponsored by Hertfordshire County Council, so I wandered along to the performance last week at the Queen Mother Theatre in Hitchin. Hertfordshire CC's objective in sponsoring this is to provide a dramatisation that can be performed in schools as part of the A level syllabus. As a result there are severe budgetary constraints and it has to last for less than an hour. This made for a 're-imagining' of the play using only four actors, casting Dr Faustus as a woman, setting the play in present-day Cambridge University, and conflating several of the characters after some heavy editing of the text. And cheap production values. They managed to preserve the narrative and the essential ethical and philosophical issues but inevitably the production was a tad one-dimensional, having lost light and shade given by ancillary characters and events. But I'll give 'em 7/10 for trying, especially as the actors submitted themselves to a post-performance question and answer session.
There you go; I'm getting all arty farty already.
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