The Caucasian Chalk Circle
Cheshire Academy's Varsity Players Present
CA Blackbox Theater-- Nov 9-11, 2017
Author: Bertolt Brecht
Translated by Eric Bently
Grusha Vashnadze: Samantha Weed
Azdak: Yuheng Peter Deng
The Singer: Amalia Gutierrez
Simon Shashava: Yuanjun Aaron Luo
Director: Mr. Aronson
Producer: Mrs. Jennifer Guarino
Stage Manager: Yin Angel Kok
Lights: Rujian James Zhou
Sounds: Rongchuan Leo Wang
The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a play written by a Geman modernist playwriter, Bertolt Brecht. It is an epic theatre, which means the story is related to the contemporary political issue. The story is a fiction based on the WWII, and it tells how a servant becomes a strong mother who is better than the child's real mother. Grusha Vashnadze, the main character of the plat, is the servant. In the war, the queen, Natella Abashwili lost her child and ran away. Narella Abashwili only cared about her treasure and property, so at that time she did not notice the loss of her child. Grusha Vashnadze picked up the child, Michael, keeping away from the enemy and adopting the child in a chaotic period. After few years past, when the war ended, Narella Abashwili came back to ask her child back. However, Michael was growing in Grusha's caring, so Grusha did not want to give out her "child". Under this condition, a Judge called Azdak showed up to solve the problem by drawing a circle around the child and making the rule that the child will belong to the one who can drag the child out of the circle first. Narella Abashwili dragged the child out of the circle first, but Azdak awarded the child to Grusha. The reason is that only a good mother can do nothing harmful to her child in any situation. Actually, it is a performance of the performance, because the st.ory above is told by a singer. The singer and other people in the valley are deciding who will control the valley. Even though the author gave the story a happy ending, but I do not think if people are like what they act on the stage will end as a happy ending in the reality, because all the people are only caring about their benefits. People have to bribe the judge before the opening court; the grandmother will force a marriage to make money and the queen really cares about her clothes instead of her child. Therefore, the injustice happened all the time in the play, and it further reminds us that there are still many injustices around us. The only way to fight against the injustice is to do the right things and stand for your justice.
The performance begins with a song. The staging light is blue while the music goes, and actors are sitting on the chairs and freezing. The stage is pretty quiet at first, and the blue light makes the stage more mysterious and a little bit depressive. After the music, the story begins. Two groups of people sit in the opposite and argue who will be the governor or manager of the valley. There are many rules seems reasonable to regard to choose the manager, but the main key is that who can field the fruit should own the land. The property should belong to the people who worth to own it. The singer begins to tell the story of caucasian chalk circle. The singer is also the narrator of the story, and she plays an important role on the stage. When Grusha and Simon have an argument and misunderstand each other, the singer takes their places to tell their inner thoughts and feelings for them. It is smart to set in this way because it can help the audience to understand the character more. Even though I think it is kind of embarrassed when actors should freeze after each line, I can simply understand Grusha's and Simon's grievance and the helpless feeling. People are all enduring a hard time, and they will have arguments when they ignore each other's difficulties and refused to listen to others. Then, through the inner feelings, the audience feel the strong sympathy for the character because they know the characters' difficulties. Therefore, it is great to have narrator going through the performance.
For the acting, I am really interested in Linda's performance. She acted three characters in the performance. Even though the characters are all mean and selfish, she acts them out differently. For the princess, she is mean and mincing; for Corporal, she is mean and strict to her subordinators; for the soldier seeing the mock court, she shows that she does not care about the mock court and she does not believe what prince Kazbeki said. Linda made the characters so mean and selfish that I really want to hate the characters and go on to the stage and kill them. Therefore, I appreciated Linda's performance. Moreover, I really got shocked when she was screaming. When she screamed, the pitch is so high and uncomfortable that Stella sitting beside me started to scream with her. At that time, I had to use my hands to cover my ears, but I still felt my ear will be deaf soon. Other people also did good jobs. All of them put one hundred percent passion on the performance. On the backstage, I heard that Peter and Jason really fell to the ground when they performed, and Peter's hands wear scratched when he fell to the ground. Thank them to show the best play to the audiences.
The only defect in staging is that we do not have enough people to perform on the stage so each actor on the stage act two to three characters. It could make audience confused and struggled with figuring out the which role they are playing. For the costume, they are all wearing same dark clothes. I think the costume could be different and be lighter. The reason is that Blackbox is all black so it cannot catch audience's attention when the characters wearing dark clothes. I understand it is a quite political serious play, but the characters might dress up in lighter blue because the lighter blue is cool color and it might not bring a negative effect on the theme of the play while catching audiences' attention.
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