You already know that the devil's great genius is to make you believe he doesn't exist. You also know that, whatever the soul, everyone has trafficked and traffics with it to achieve desire, comfort, pleasure, or power. Splendor Goethe's Faust is permanently relevant, and the very free version that William Kentridge and the Handspring Puppet Company created in 1995, featuring a Faust traveling across the African continent, keeps the denunciation of human evil fresh in the international context of wars and genocides in which we live. The African Faust, like his European counterpart, is a dissatisfied wise man who wants to recover his youth and energy to win over his Margaritas. He makes a pact with the devil and travels through an Africa of satraps, shooting at everything that moves.

Exactly 30 years ago, South African creators William Kentridge, Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones premiered Faustus in Africa!, a show that would become an emblem of their company, the Handspring Puppet Company. It was 1995 and their country had just experienced its first post-apartheid elections, which gave victory to Nelson Mandela. In that context, the trio of artists covered the Splendor by Goethe to immerse him in the setting of the African continent, imagining a Faust who goes on safari after signing a pact with the devil and becomes a metaphor for colonialism. Three decades later, the company has reworked the show to give it new life. The new production premiered on May 1 in Cape Town (South Africa) and arrives in Barcelona this Friday and Saturday, as part of the Grec Festival.