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Touring nationally Spring 2011
Produced in association with South Hill Park Arts Centre
The Caucasian Chalk Circle
By Bertolt Brecht
Translated by Frank McGuinness
Directed by Tom Neill
Music by Ron McAllister
Design by Victoria Spearing
The Caucasian Chalk Circle is Bertolt Brecht’s most famous work and one of the most important pieces of theatre of the 20th century. First presented by the National Theatre in 1997, this version by Frank McGuinness is brought to the stage in 2011 by Blackeyed Theatre, combining its trademark, audacious performance-style, brilliant, original live music and stunning design.
A morality masterpiece, The Caucasian Chalk Circle powerfully demonstrates Brecht's pioneering theatrical techniques. A servant girl sacrifices everything to protect a child abandoned in the heat of civil war. Order restored, she is made to confront the boy's biological mother in a legal contest over who deserves to keep him. The comical judge calls on an ancient tradition - the chalk circle - to resolve the dispute. Who wins?
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) is acknowledged as one of the great dramatists whose plays, work with the Berliner Ensemble and writing have had an incredible influence on the theatre. His landmark plays include The Threepenny Opera and, while exiled from Germany and living in the USA, such masterpieces as The Life of Galileo, Mother Courage and The Caucasian Chalk Circle.
