Accessible 'Faust' Logs In

Addressing the fate of art in an age dominated by mass media is no small feat. Neither is bringing opera to the YouTube generation, for that matter. But these are among the challenges that Charlie I. Miller ’08 takes up in his multimedia senior thesis project, “Username: Faust,” which will run Apr. 9-13 in the New College Theater Studio. An innovative hybrid of video, opera, live theater, various versions of the Faust myth, and several internet components, Miller’s thesis defies easy categorization.

“I came up with the Faust framework because Faust is a person who’s trapped between two worlds,” Miller says. “In the original, it’s sort of the real world and the spiritual world. In my version it’s someone who’s trapped in between the world of reality and the world of virtual reality. It’s also negotiating disability and non-disability. And the piece itself is dealing in theater and cinema.”

“It’s incredibly original and adventurous in every respect,” Visual and Environmental Studies (VES) professor Alfred Guzetti, Miller’s thesis advisor, says. “It’s trying out so many things at the same time—the actors, the development of the script with the actors, the improvisations that went behind it, the staging, the combination of music with drama in this extremely improbable way, the amplification of the action through the media, and then the bringing of the whole issue of YouTube and the popular media and making that such an integral part of what happens on the stage, and then extending the project so it’s not only the stage experience that people go and see in the theater, but it’s also an internet experience that precedes and follows the stage experience.”

“Username: Faust” is the culmination of years of forethought. A theater devotee since the age of four, Miller has acted in and directed numerous productions in addition to a stint as president of the Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert and Sullivan players. Miller honed his filmmaking skills as a VES concentrator, all the while planning to eventually combine theater and video. His extensive work with the Denver-based Physically Handicapped Actors and Musical Artists League (PHAMALY) opened his eyes to issues involving disability and accessibility as well as new approaches to his art.

“It really changed the way I think about theater, because when you have a wheelchair there are so many more possibilities in terms of how you can move around on stage,” Miller says. Each of the actors in the project is disabled, and Miller claims that their ability to transcend the audience’s preconceived notions can be transformative.

“Working with people with disabilities is a very powerful experience for the audience because the audience goes in, they know everyone in the cast has a disability, and they try to figure out what everyone has...and then 5 minutes into it you’re so wrapped up in the show that that doesn’t matter at all,” he says. “It’s this really interesting transformation that goes on in the audience that adds a whole layer of meaning to the show.”

The four actors Miller uses, all recruited from outside of Harvard, were integral to the development of the script, which emerged from a series of improvised scenes. “It’s something that I’m really interested in,” Miller says, “pursuing the role of director as conductor, and how you work with an ensemble to create an original piece.”

The collaborative aspect of the work also necessarily extended to the production of the multimedia presentation. Utilizing a staff of students and alumni and a sizable budget from the VES department, the production attempts to coordinate a complex array of video feeds, sound recordings, and light cues with the live performers. Roxanna K. Myhrum ’05, who wrote her undergraduate thesis on the Americans with Disabilities Act, is producing the show with Miller.

Myhrum appreciates that the show raises issues without explicitly commenting on them. “It’ll be a fun opportunity for the audience to take away whatever they take away. People should come ready for a multimedia sensory experience,” she says.

Though the show’s techniques are undeniably innovative, the collaborators’ focus is still very much on storytelling. “I think it’s much better to concentrate on the actual subject matter,” Nicholas J. Shearer ’09, the project’s video engineer, says. “We aren’t about the technology behind it, as cool as it is. We really are not about style over substance here. We are very much about trying to tell a story.”