Due to the many scenes, such as the Easter procession, the church consecration and the journey to hell with its ecclesiastical-liturgical context, a graveyard was also needed. This was realized with the help of several theatre workshops and the borrowing of props from other houses. For a long time now, not everything has been produced completely from scratch. To save costs, resources and time, numerous props, substructures and scaffolding materials are used from previous festivals, have been reworked or partly borrowed from other theatres. Some of the gravestones for the graveyard scene, for example, are on loan from the Leipzig Opera and the bells come from Kaiserslautern. Final touches are being made by the staff of the painting room with great attention to detail, so that everything fits perfectly into the new stage set. The numerous larger-than-life figures that are currently being finished in the painting room should also look perfect in the end. Theatre painter Claudia Fischer is currently polishing up the Madonna. She has already appeared in The Name of the Rose in 2019 and will be back in Faust's Damnation. In the joinery, the facings of the cathedral steps from last year will be reworked and then colour-matched in the painting room.
All preparations for the 30th DomStufen-Festpiele in Erfurt have to be completed by 19th June 2023, because that is when the set-up for Faust's Damnation on Domplatz begins. A total of six days and up to 70 people are planned for working tirelessly, so that in the end everything is in place, works technically and looks good.
In order to manage the tight schedule, the work in front of and behind the stage must go hand in hand. In the last 30 years of the DomStufen-Festpiele in Erfurt, the staff gained a lot of experience, developed efficient routines and learned from staging to staging. People in the workshops have been working steadily for many months already. For director and set designer Ben Baur, the Cathedral of Erfurt is not only the backdrop, but also a player itself. For this purpose, the stage axis will be turned for the first time towards the High Choir with its medieval stained glass. The stage thus merges with the back of the church to form an ensemble and moves into the audience's field of vision as a complete work of art. For Ben Baur, the Domplatz is no longer been just a Christian-religious place, but also a place of market life, carnival and other festivities. Faust's Damnation becomes a kind of popular theatre that transports people in the manner of a mystery play into a world full of passion, dark magic and tragedy.
