4 performances
Hampton Court Theatre, United Kingdom
The Prologue - Establishing a frame for the play proper: revised and updated for our production, a group of squatters is meeting to decide the ownership of the burnt out shell of their squat and to what use it should now be put, to remain a squat or to become a Community Centre.
Act I - The story of the chalk circle is then presented as both an entertainment, a fairy tale and as an illustration of "old wisdom". After the fall of the paramount prince, all the governors of Grusinia are executed, including Georgi Abashvili. His wife escapes, leaving behind their child, whom the new rulers are seeking. But Grusha, the maid, takes the child and after many dangers reaches safety in the mountains where she cares for the child as if it were her own. Here she is forced - for protection and respectability - to marry a dying peasant. Then Simon, the soldier to whom she is engaged, returns from the wars and hears her claim the child as her own
Act 2 - In parallel to this story and told in flashback the plot is centred on the figure of Azdak, the former village scribe who has been appointed judge. When the earlier overthrow is reversed, and the Governor's wife returns, the case for the ownership of the child is eventually heard by Azdak. A variation of the judgement of Solomon is used to decide the case: the child is placed in a chalk circle.
Translated by James and Tania Stern and W H Auden
Written when Brecht was living in exile in lthe United States during World War II, THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE is one of his most frequently performed plays. For the story, Brecht borrowed from an ancient Chinese tale -- echoed in the biblical account of the judgment of King Solomon -- in which two women claim the same child, but he subverted it into a parable advocating the idea that resources should go to those best able to make use sof them. Thanks to the rascally judge Azdak, natural -- though not biological -- justice is rendered, and lthe peasant Grusha, rather lthan the mother, gets to keep the child she loves.
