A teaching folder created specifically for the new Edexcel 2016 specification.

This folder will enable you to practically and theoretically explore the play in the light of your chosen practitioner and will provide you with a comprehensive set of resources to help students to develop their own production concept of Doctor Faustus. The folder covers the play scene by scene with teaching suggestions (and accompanying handouts) provided for all scenes so that your students will develop an integral understanding of the text as a whole in order to interpret it for a contemporary audience.

All ideas and handouts focus upon the play from the role of a director (creating a production for a 21st century audience) and will provide students with detailed resources to help in their research of the play's original performance conditions, and the social, historical and cultural factors that are central to the context of the original text as well as the original aims and intentions of the playwright.

It will encourage students to develop their own production concepts and have a firm idea of their intended audience. The teaching ideas and student handouts cover a range of theory and analysis such as: looking at the classical Greek influences, the Renaissance Humanist elements, the portrayal of Faustus' quest for power and how this changes throughout the course of the play, the function and directorial interpretations for some of the minor characters such as Wagner, the Scholars, or the Old Man, how to stage the magical elements and how they would have been staged in Marlowe's day, the relationship between Faustus and Mephistopheles, the class structure within society at the time and the relevance of this for the audience, the portrayal of religion and its relevance today, directing Faustus' descent into Hell and ideas for updating this text for a modern audience.


The folder will help you to explore, in detail, elements such as plot, language, form, structure, characterisation and stage directions and how students will use these in their directorial concepts. It covers the play scene by scene with both theoretical and practical ideas to use for each stage of the play. The resources will help students to not only understand Marlowe's play, but will also allow them to develop their own directorial ideas for each part of the play. You could follow the folder in its entirety, or dip in about of the folder. It does not make reference to a specific practitioner ensuring that you can slot in your own practitioner theory at any point.