Grochala, Sarah (2017) Controversial Intentions: Adaptation as an Act of Iconoclasm in Rupert Goold and Ben Power’s Faustus (2004) and the Chapman Brothers’ Insult to Injury (2003)'. In: Contemporary Approaches to Adaptation in Theatre. Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp. 295-316. ISBN 9781137597823

Abstract

In this chapter, I analyse the radical approach that Rupert Goold and Ben Power take to adapting Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. I will argue that their Faustus is primarily an adaptation of an adaptation strategy as opposed to an adaption of a narrative. Goold and Power adopt an adaptation strategy employed by Chapman Brothers in their reworking of Goya’s Disasters of War, Insult to Injury, transposing it from the medium of visual art to the medium of theatre. My analysis will take into account the idea of artist intention. Artistic intentions will be used, not as a benchmark against which to judge the success of the finished artwork, but as a key to unlock the how’s and why’s of the adaptation process.