Faustine: A Dissertation. A Confession. A Mental Breakdown is a one-person horror musical/pop-opera. Who the one person is depends on when you see the show. It could be either Sarah Norcross or Lydia Brinkmann. It was Sarah who performed the role of Faustine when Brig saw the production, leaving Lydia to act as the show’s technician.
Norcross is playing the title role of Faustine, a post-graduate research student at an American university. It’s the day of her thesis defence – what we’d call a viva, and there’s a publishing contract to be awarded to the ‘best’ thesis presented by the graduating class.
If the hell of trying to survive a PhD on a miserly stipend wasn’t bad enough, Faustine is at a breaking point. As she hesitantly introduces her work on the plays of Ibsen, suddenly, everything changes.
Faustine, it turns out, has done a deal with the devil. The audience is then told the story of how this deal came to be, and what has happened since, as Faustine’s life has become an endless whirl of sex, drugs, and academic conference presentations.
It’s quickly established that Faustine was an academically gifted child. She’s completed her undergraduate degree and is now approaching the end of her PhD research project. She just has to submit a twenty-page paper for her supervisor as an interim progress check.
Anyone who has ever undertaken a PhD will understand Faustine’s despair. There is a point in the project when you hate it, you hate your subject entirely, and you just want the whole thing to be over. You can’t face the thought of yet another blank page on a Word Document, its cursor blinking at you menacingly.
Faustine has problems already. Her dad is not in her life, her mum doesn’t really seem to understand why she’s even bothering with a PhD, and she also has a habit of ringing at the worst possible time. Her roommate in her dormitory at the University is a popular girl. Faustine is not. She has a boyfriend she’s been dating for six years, but he doesn’t seem to be of any importance to her, or her to him.
Having struck her first deal with the emissary of satan, Faustine is provided with a paper that is quickly a sensation. Her supervisor loves it. She’s encouraged to present at a conference, where the leading scholar in her field loves it. Following drinks in the bar, it’s no surprise that the said Professor of Nordic Romanticism seduces her.
It’s perhaps more of a surprise that this episode leads to her becoming best friends with Emma, the popular roommate. Over bottles of wine, they bond and gossip about their relationships, their research, and academia more widely.
The fast-paced scenes are broken up with songs, in a style that is sometimes rock, sometimes more operatic in tone. Norcross is a good performer, and she brings a relatability to the role of a research student on the verge of a breakdown due to the pressures of academia.
Overall, the show shines a light on the pressures young graduate students are placed under, by both themselves and others within academia, to succeed and to be successful in their field, no matter the cost. It’s just very unlikely that Faustine’s methods would be approved by the ethics committee.
Faustine: A Dissertation. A Confession. A Mental Breakdown continues at 21:35 in Theatre 3 at The Space @ Surgeon’s Hall, until August 9.
Featured image courtesy Edinburgh Fringe Society
