Berkley Author Presents ‘Faustus’ in an Unusual Venue

Berkley author Kathe Koja has chosen a perhaps unusual venue – the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Detroit – to stage a play about a man whose lust for power and knowledge causes him to sell his soul to the devil.

Koja is presenting “The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus,” a play based on the controversial novel by one of Koja’s favorite writers, Christopher Marlowe, the Oakland Press news reports.

Performances at the church, located at 4605 Cass Ave., Detroit, are 9 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 16, and Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Nov. 21-23. Opening night (Friday, Nov. 15) is sold out. Buy tickets.

The play is the inspiration for the Rev. Roger Mohr’s Sunday sermon at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Detroit. His sermon for the 11 a.m. service is. On her blog, Koja wrote that regardless of whether the ‘Faustus’ production is appealing, “if you have seen or plan to see the show, this message, coming between the two weekends, makes an ideal philosophical accompaniment.”

Koja is gaining a reputation for theatrical presentations in unlikely venues, such as a Victorian mansion in Detroit’s Brush Park, where she staged an adaptation of her novel “Under the Poppy.” as well as the Detroit Institute of Arts and Industrial Arts Center. She said unusual venues give the audiences an opportunity to engage in ways they might not in a traditional theater.

“All of those laces become more than just settings for us, and help create the plays and the audiences experiences of those plays,” she told the newspaper. “Sitting in a theater seat in the dark, watching a stage, is one way to see and show, and having a deadly sin slide next to you in a church pew is quite another.”

Many of the actors who appeared in Koja’s “Under the Poppy” are cast in “Faustus,” including lead actor Steve Xander Carson, who worked with Koja to adapt Marlowe’s 1604 masterpiece of dark ambition for the Detroit production, are cast in the 90-minute production. Others are Jonathan West, Laura Bailey, Vanessa Ellen Henstchel. Samantha Moltmaker and newcomer Chris Jakob

Two more novels by Koja are set for release in 2014: “The Mercury Waltz,” her sequel to “Under the Poppy,” a short fiction collection called “Gone to the Extremes.”