'The Devil's Doctor': a new play about the birth of modern medicine
31 March 2009
On 28 February, Shifting Sands Theatre began a national tour of 'The Devil's Doctor', a new play funded by the Wellcome Trust and based on the life of the 16th-century Swiss alchemist and physician Paracelsus. The play hits London's Dana Centre tonight and continues touring the UK until 3 May.
Paracelsus is one of the most controversial figures in the history of science and medicine, and has divided opinion ever since he wandered throughout Europe as a travelling doctor. Was he a champion of scientific rationalism who overturned the dogmatic, useless practices that doctors had used since antiquity? Or a charlatan who peddled snake-oil cures while chasing the alchemists' futile dream of making gold from dross?
'The Devil's Doctor' invites audiences to make up their own minds as it offers a glimpse of the riotous life of this mercurial Renaissance man, weaving his fractious, meandering and decidedly tipsy path through the social, intellectual and religious upheavals of his time.
As an army surgeon, town physician, mystic and religious heretic, Paracelsus cheats death, works miracle cures, quarrels with his conservative rivals and attracts legends galore. One of the prototypes of Goethe's Faust and a hero to Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein, Paracelsus claimed that alchemy held the key to life, the universe and the soul of humanity.
Shifting Sands tell the story of Paracelsus using their distinctive interweaving of physical and visual theatre, comedy and pathos. A rich blend of words and images, sound and chemical magic, 'The Devil's Doctor' captures the contradictory essence of a most extraordinary man.
The play has been devised from a mixture of improvisation and text, developed in collaboration with Paracelsus's most recent biographer, the science writer Philip Ball. It was funded by a Wellcome Trust Arts Award.
Dates and venues
- 31 March: Dana Centre, London.
- 1 April: South Hill Park Arts Centre, Bracknell.
- 17 April: Borough Theatre, Abergavenny.
- 22-23 April: South Street Arts Centre, Reading.
- 24 April: Christ’s Hospital College, Horsham.
- 2 May: Redbridge Drama Centre, South Woodford.
- 3 May: Assembly Rooms, Derby.
Image:
Cast members from 'The Devil's Doctor'. Credit: Shifting Sands Theatre