Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights

WISCONSIN CLASSIC STAGE ELECTRIFIES HALLOWEEN WITH THE MILWAUKEE PREMIERE OF GERTRUDE STEIN'S DOCTOR FAUSTUS LIGHTS THE LIGHTS The First Professional staging of Stein’s experimental operetta in Milwaukee | A 360° Ritual of Language and Light Wisconsin Classic Stage illuminates Milwaukee's Halloween season with the city's professional premiere of Gertrude Stein's Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights , an immersive operetta running October 30 through November 8, 2026, in the Sanctuary Hall of Calvary Presbyterian Church. Capped at 75 audience members a night, 25 Reserved Seating and 50 Standing Rooms tickets the piece immerses its audience in 360 degrees of spectral light, live monophonic score, and Stein's incantatory language, transforming Stein's 1938 opera libretto into a one-of-a-kind experience. Composer Lincoln Donner has developed a haunting monophonic score threaded with spectral choral textures in close collaboration with Cole Castine who directs, designs and illuminates the production. THE STORY Faustus has traded his soul for the power of artificial light and lives suspended in a world of endless illumination, attended only by a dog and a boy. A woman, Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel, is born in the forest, bitten by a viper, and comes to him seeking to be healed. Tormented by his own soullessness, Faustus bargains for hell; the Devil names the price as murder, then dangles a further temptation: eternal youth, if Faustus can persuade the woman to follow him into damnation. She refuses, firmly, choosing to reside in the living world. What emerges is an absurd, tragicomic, and startlingly modern meditation on knowledge, identity, and the hunger to illuminate every last darkness. Written 87 years ago, Stein's Faustus lands today with unnerving precision: in an era racing to build machines that can know more than any human mind, what remains of the soul once knowledge no longer needs us? FROM ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, COLE CASTINE “Stein’s Faustus hands you a world…