Caucasian Chalk Circle
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Year 12 Drama
Semester 1
EPIC THEATRE
INTRODUCTION
Bertolt Brecht a Marxist, a German and the creative genius behind a new breed of theatre. Brecht understood that people are highly emotional beings who cannot easily detach themselves from their feelings. It was this understanding that enabled him to create a new form of theatre that overcame people's tendency to react emotionally to plays. He created techniques and devices that aided in emotionally detaching the audience from the characters in a play and therefore impelled them to adopt a critical mindset. Brecht believed that 'intellect causes action, emotion causes reaction.' It was action that caused people to go out and do things rather than simply feel things and this was what Brecht was aiming for through his new style of theatre.
Brecht wrote many brilliant and controversial plays, one of these works was The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Brecht wrote this play while in exile in the United States during World War 2. The first half of the story entails a compromise made to settle a land dispute between two collective farms in Soviet Georgia. To illustrate the ethics of such judgements, a folk-singer is invited to re-tell the old tale of 'The Circle of Chalk'...