How to Do a Brecht Play Right: Review of Cheshire Academy’s “The Caucasian Chalk Circle”

    I was cautiously optimistic going into Cheshire Academy’s production of Bertolt Brecht’s “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” directed by Marc Aronson. On one hand, I am well acquainted with many of the people who were involved in the production and already knew of their talents. On the other hand, Brecht’s style of play doesn’t lend itself well to a high school performance; wordy with an emphasis on social themes. While I was unable to attend Mr. Aronson’s last Brecht production, “Life of Galileo”, the snippets I heard about it afterwards were not positive, with the major complaint being that it was boring.
    Fortunately, of the many words I could use to describe this performance of “The Caucasian Chalk Circle”, ‘boring’ is not one of them. This is mainly due to the actors, all of whom seemed perfectly cast. This play has only a few developed characters but a revolving door of ensemble members, yet the actors were able to make each role stand on its own. David Mathison in particular succeeded in this with his wide range of voices and mannerisms, going from a paranoid cloaked figure speaking in fragmented sentences to a squeaky voiced nobleman to a regal lawyer back to back. Peter Deng was the most emotive member of the cast, especially evident in the first scene where he was always reacting to the others’ actions rather than just sitting there.
    In terms of single roles, Sam Weed was the natural choice to play the motherly Grusha, and I feel that she managed to play up Grusha’s practical nature in the earlier scenes rather than simply portraying her as a naïve, good-hearted girl; she even got a lovely little singing moment when crossing the bridge. However, the performance that surprised me the most was Amalia Gutierrez as the non-singing Singer. Not only did she have moments of sass, like at the very end of the opening scene, and genuine emotion when reciting the inner thoughts of the characters, but she felt much more present in the scenes than you would expect from a Narrator. She would sometimes stand right up next to the actors, occasionally directly interacting with them as with the Governor when he was being led off to his execution, and other times she would be hanging back on the edges of the stage watching the action unfold before her.
    The constant presence of the Singer reminds the audience that, in both the full context of the play itself and our reality, the story being told is just that - a story. This is one of many ways in which the show followed Brechtian principles. The sets were no more complicated than they need to be, and there were practically no attempts to hide the stage crew when they came to move things around. For moments where there were supposed to be a large number of characters on stage, they simply played recordings of teachers reading the lines. Having these disembodied voices of people whom the audience are likely to recognize ends up subtracting from the illusion rather than adding to it, which seems to have been intentional. The opening of the play set this precedent by having a folksy song play while the actors come in stage, and then forcing both them and the audience to wait, silently and patiently, until the song ended.
    Having read the entire play in advance for class, I took note of what changes were made. Due to the size of the cast, some scenes which used to feature four or five random characters were slightly reworked to have the number of characters reduced to two or three, such as when Grusha is initially watching baby Michael at the palace while the others convince her to leave, and the scene with the merchants at the bridge where three characters were condensed to two. Other bits were cut entirely, such as when Grusha tries to stay at the inn, when young Michael is allying with the older children, and the selection of Azdack’s past cases as judge. These cuts were understandable due to the limited cast size, and seeing as the play in this form ended up being two hours long anyway, I can only imagine how long it would have been if they had done everything. Even with these cuts, the story’s major themes, such as justice (Azdack’s corrupt sense of justice, the idea that items go to those who can make the most good out of it).
    The last thing I’d like to note is the placement of the intermission. Rather than being halfway through the play, it occurs later on, right before Azdack’s backstory. By doing this, the play becomes re-framed as two different stories: first, the story of the maid Grusha becoming the mother of the noble child; and second, the story of the illegitimate judge who, through granting Grusha custody over Michael, delivers the moral of the play, that goods should go to those who can make the most out of them. Not only are both these stories made compelling by the excellent performances, but making Azdack essentially a secondary protagonist places an even greater emphasis on the social message, making this performance of “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” a perfect blend of the Brecht and more contemptorary styles of acting. I would drop everything to see this show again if I had the chance.

Scene with Signs Reflection (Excerpt from Brecht’s “The Caucasian Chalk Circle”

    Overall, our excerpt of a scene from “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” worked out even better than I had initially hoped. First of all, though it took us extra time to learn our lines and become comfortable performing the scene, the performances ended up being spot-on. Unfortunately there are moments in the video where, even after drastically raising the volume of the raw video footage and lowering the volume of the background music, it could be difficult to tell what we were saying. In the future, I think that we can all work on speaking louder and more clearly. However, speaking of the music, I personally feel that it added to the atmosphere and tension of the scene, especially the short song used at the end, without making its presence too obvious. Then again, it would likely have felt more Brechtian without the music, even if it ended up feeling slightly more awkward as a consequence.
    The minimalistic set also worked in our favor, as it forces the audience to focus on the content of the scene rather than becoming fully immersed, the mind of effect that Brecht was going for in his plays. In retrospect, the idea of using a bottle for the baby did not work out as well as we had originally envisioned it. While it succeeded in being less sympathetic than an actual baby doll would have been, I can see how any random person watching the scene could take a while to realize what the bottle is meant to represent. If we had planned ahead more, we could have made its purpose more clear. Even the mini label added to the bottle clarifying its role is impossible to read in the video.
    When we started work on this scene, the aspect we put the most thought into was the use of signs. We made most of them double sided both to save posterboard and to add an extra layer of meaning to each one. Watching the video, I see that I personally could have paid more attention to making my sign visible to the audience while performing, but Helen and Youngchen did well in this regard. Helen also pausing the scene to show off the last two signs as she picked them up was a good call in that it both gave the audience time to read them and further contributed to the staged feeling this play is meant to give off.
    The signs all served different purposes: the opening sign sets the tone for the scene and the “Cottage” sign sets the location; the “Losing the Baby” sign states the threat the Corporal presents and what Grusha is primarily concerned about; the sign reading “What is the woman afraid of?” provides the audience with a question to think about, forcing them to lay attention as Brecht would want, and the “Truth or Lie?” sign does the same while also giving the audience a glimpse into Grusha’s thoughts; the sign Grusha hits the Corporal with is covered in phrases that serve as her motivation for her saving the baby; and the “Mother” sign represents Grusha’s accepting of Michael as her own while also answering a question presented by the first sign. Who are the good people? Mothers, for one.