Enron and Faustus Context

Skilling imprisoned for 24 years

Faustus asks for 24 years with complete power

"Jeffrey Skilling: A Marlovian over-reacher" - Billington

Goold convinced Prebble to stage it as a classical tragedy by replacing the Kings and Emperors with corporate chief executives

"[Lay magnanimously greets another couple of starstruck employees. He's like an avuncular politician.]"

Fastow said to Bethany Mclean in an interview: "I don't care what you write about the company, just don't make me look bad"

The interview

George W Bush was the largest Enron donor

"Some of my best friends are politicians" - Lay

Awarded title of America's 'Most innovative company' by Forbes 6 years running

Ironic given all a facade

Fastow reduced his sentence to 6 years by testifying against Skilling

NO loyalty

Epic Theatre - Brecht

(Attempts to move away from the need to imitate reality and instead present ideas to encourage the audience to make judgements, audience are aware they are watching a show, characters generally represent stereotypes rather than real people, no catharsis, against naturalistic theatre, Brecht famous for using song, chorus and physicality in his plays reminds audiences they are watching a play, cannot suspend belief, need to think, here to learn, 'Breaking the 4th wall', no catharsis, highlights audience reality is equally constructed to play so can be just as easily changed, provokes rational self-reflection and critical view)

"[three suited individuals enter, finding their way with shite sticks. They have the heads to mice]"

After collapse many female employees posed naked for Playboy

Portrayal of women in Enron, machismo and misogyny

Lehman Brothers - 4th largest bank in USA, collapsed in 2008, worth $691 billion

"Playwrights and theatres have responded to the changing economic contexts of their time" - Clements

"[The conjoined figures struggle to turn around in unison, both pulling in opposite directions]"

1 ton of documents shredded

Prebble "uses the play's visual language as a swift, effective and occasionally comic way of communicating ideas and information" - Clements

"[tiny pieces of shredded paper being blown all over him]"

"[Detritus litters the stage]"

2000 election = 0.09% margin separating B and G at end on public votes, presented as a moment where America broke itself, Florida business revealed system rigged, flawed, ineffectual, ineptitude and equality permeating throughout

"RECOUNT: FLORIDA CALLED FOR BUSH"

"Guess who's just got off a call with the next President of the United States?"

California is 6th biggest economy in the world

"Electricity rates are climbing and California has gone into meltdown"

Tensions between the pursuit of knowledge (renaissance) and christian values (humility, piety)

"Marlow is expressing [...] man's new faith in his own intellectual resources against a deeply rooted Christian concept of the vanity of human endeavour alone" - Gatti

Presentation of good and bad angels could represent the opposing sides - LINK - war between Roe who wants to continue with the company and Skilling who wants to develop

Milton's Satan - "Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell"

"He has been cautioned about the consequences that will ensue if he persists in his chosen action" - Gill

"Why this is hell, nor am I out of it" - Meph.

LINK - Skilling knows the risks of his scheme

Religious beliefs at the time (Calvinism) meant that heaven and hell seemed very real to the audience

"Many members of Marlowe's original audience would have understood the spiritual realm as equally real as, or more real than, the physical, material realm" - Simkin

"To imagine that after this life there is any pain? Tush, these are trifles and mere old wives' tales."

LINK - abstract concept in Enron, blurred morality

Plague rife lots of people dying

Christopher Ricks has observed that, at a time when the plague was rife, Faustus' request for twenty four years of guaranteed life "is the greatest and most fundamental thing he buys".

"He will spare him four and twenty years" - F

Marlow was known for spread atheistic beliefs

"All men in christianity ought to endeavour that the mouth of so dangerous a member may be stopped" - Riggs

"To imagine that after this life there is any pain? Tush, these are trifles and mere old wives' tales." - F

"A sound magician is a mighty God" - F

LINK - "I believe in God, I believe in democracy and I believe in the company" - L

Marlow was known for breaking the law

"Cited for disturbing the peace, arrested for counterfeiting, suspicion of murder, felonious assault and public atheism" - Riggs

Divinity is the basest of the three" - F

LINK - "There's a dignity to giving people something they can't touch" - S

Marlow's work was very contentious for the time

"Marlowe's writing voiced the aspirations of blasphemers, sodomites, foreigners, unemployed scholars and the mutinous poor in Renaissance England" - Riggs

Marlow had a bad reputation

"Odious moral reputation" - Riggs

"I fear he is fall'n into that damned art for which they two are infamous through the world" - Scholar

"You're a godless atheist" - R

Renaissance Man = limitless capacities for development, sceptical about divinity - theory/concept

Literally Faustus

LINK - "If you're invested in the company you work for you are literally investing in yourself [...] an act of belief" - humanism

During reformation (1534) Catholicism was driven underground - viewed as a theatrical show, feared

"See a troupe of bald-pate friars whose summum bonum is in belly cheer" - Meph, mocking Catholic church as gluttonous and greedy

Age of discovery/exploration - explorers created the first permanent settlement in Jamestown Virginia 1607

General advancement and ambition of both plays

Old Man = common trope in morality plays, Christianity personified, figure of wisdom, forbearance and piety

"Stay thy desperate steps!" - OM

LINK - S and F disrespecting elders, also corrupt elders no religion or morality in the play

Suicide considered the ultimate sin

By offering a dagger, Meph hopes that F will commit suicide, thus committing the ultimate sin of despair - a refusal to believe God's word that any soul can be saved - the sin against the Holy Ghost

"[Mephistopheles gives him a dagger]"

Economic collapse of 2008

Seen by Prebble as well as the Enron crisis itself

Basic Enron Facts

1985 = merged other companies to make biggest gas pipeline

1989 = Skilling joins

1994 = electricity market deregulated

1999 = Roe opens powerplant in India and it failed

Dec 2001 = file for bankruptcy protection

$30 billion in debt

Collapsed in 2002

2010 = Enron opened on Broadway, it failed

Marlowe was a spy to Queen Elizabeth 1st

Died when stabbed in eye during a bar fight 1593

Darwinism

Species in constant competition to survive

E = only want fittest/brightest people running/working for them

Icarus

Hubris in both

9/11

Enron, speeches, twin towers = symbols of capitalism