ShakesParody After Dark at Mickee Faust Club

The Mickee Faust Club is Tallahassee Florida’s tongue-in-cheek answer to a certain unctuous rodent living in Orlando. But the Faust Club’s name also plays homage to Goethe’s good German doctor whose struggles with the devil mirror the group’s own.

The leader of the club is Mickee Faust himself, the foul-mouth, illegitimate sewer rat brother of that better known, better groomed cartoon creation. In real life, this cigar chomping, male rodent is deaf, female performance artist Terry Galloway.

Ostensibly Faust has grown embittered by stories about the “other” side of his family: the Parades of Lights, the castles, the sleeping beauties and the constant singing of happy songs. And it has driven him into madness—and a subversive brand of theater.

Rallying around this rebellious rat bastard are the three dozen members of the Club who call themselves the Mickee Faustkateers. The Faustkateers are a diverse bunch—firewomen and hairdressers, teens and parents, video producers and radio news reporters, biologists and nurses, university professors and students, ex prostitutes and prosecuting attorneys, Mennonites and men in tights.

But several times a year they peacefully converge to write, direct and perform the raucous and wily cabarets that have become Faust’s hallmark. In every Faust show you’ll find a mix of political and socio-sexual satire, literary and cinematic parodies, old vaudeville, new vaudeville, original and adapted songs and some fully-staged bad jokes thrown in for good measure.

Every cabaret is a mutt mix of grizzled Faust veterans and raw, terrified recruits, some of whom are thrown into substantial roles that require an expertise they do not at first (or sometimes ever) possess.

Although it bills itself as “community theater for the weird community,” World Media Domination has truly been Faust’s goal. Faust now produces a nationally acclaimed hour-long radio show and comic video shorts that have been winning recognition and prizes in film festivals throughout the world.