Download The Caucasian Chalk Circle

The Caucasian Chalk Circle
By Bertolt Brecht Directed by Jay Scheib,
Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven Connecticut, Feb 2001, Yale Dramatic Association Presents
Produced by
Stage Manager
Original Score
Dramaturgy
Scene Design
Lighting
P e r fo rm e d b y
Sound Design
Costumes
Asst. Director
Trans. Stern & Auden, Produced by Mollie Goldstein, Original Score Kyle Jarrow, Scene Design Suzanne Wang, Lighting Jeremy Morris , Sound Design Joe, Costumes Elizabeth Bourgeious, Asst. Director Sarah Wright,
Stephanie Brown, Stage Manager Genny Gonzalez-Turner, Dramaturgy Brian Regis, Chris Johnson, Tim O’Connor, P erfo rmed by Natalia Payne, Ross Wachsman, Emily Lodish, Scott Peterman, Cem Ozdeniz, Raphi Seifer, Julia Kots,
Jamie Ponsoldt, Nate Schenkkan, Isaac Laskin, Graham Norris, Lyric Benson, Nell Rutledge-Leverenz, Mike Wighton, Eric Johnson, Deborah Kroplick, Brian Mullin, Avni Bhatia, Julia Hart, Shira Milikowsky, Kim Swennen, Marta Castaing
>>
Realism and Stylization. Actors, stage designers, and directors normally
achieve stylization at the cost of realism they create a style by creating ‘the’
peasant, ‘the’ wedding, ‘the’ battlefield; in other words by removing whatever is
unique, special, contradictory, accidental, and providing hackneyed or hackneyable stereotypes the bulk of which represent no mastery of reality but are
just drawings—simple to provide since the originals already have elements style
in them. Such stylists have no style of their own, nor any wish to grasp that of
reality; all they do is to imitate methods of stylization. Plainly all art embellishes
(which is not the same as glossing over)...
Tension. The play was written in America after ten years of exile, and its structure is partly conditioned by a revulsion against the commercialized dramaturgy of Broadway. At the same time it makes use of certain elements of that older
American theatre whose forte lay in burlesques and ‘shows,’ (...) the tension
focused not merely on the progress of the plot but more on the question How?
Nowadays when we are offered an amusing trifle it is simply the feverish efforts
of the rapidly ageing whore who hopes that her graceless tricks will serve to
postpone or annul the moment when her painful and frequently-operated vagina has once again to be handed over to a client. The pleasure of telling a story
is inhibited by the fear that it will fall flat.
From Bertolt Brect’s Notes to the Caucasian Chalk Cirlce
From Bertolt Brect’s Notes to the Caucasian Chalk Cirlce
>>
As long as Freedom is based on violence and the practice of art on priveleges,
works of art will tend to be prisons; the great works, accomplices of power.
from Heiner Müller’s essay, Fatzer + - Keuner
>>
>>
The transformation of meaning is the barometer measuring the pressure of
experience at the dawn of capitalism, which is just begining to discover the
world as market. The speed of transformation of meaning constitutes the primacy of metaphor, which serves as a kind of optical diaphragm to scale down
the bombardment of images. ‘The pressure of experience drives language into
poetry’ (Eliot). The fear of metaphor is the fear of the materials’ independent
mobility. The fear of tragedy is the fear of permanence of revolution.
from Heiner Müller’s essay, Fatzer + - Keuner
>>
We, as revolutionary Marxists, cannot consider our task complete if we produce an uncritical copy of reality, conceiving the theatre as a mirror of the
times. WE can no more consider this our task than we can overcome this state
of affairs by theatrical means alone, nor can we present man as a creature of
sublime greatness in times which in fact socially distort him—in a word, it is not
our business to produce an idealistic effect. The business of revolutionary theatre is to take reality as its point of departure and to magnify the social discrepancy, making it an element of our indictment, our revolt, our new order.
From Erwin Piscator’s Outline of a Sociological Dramaturgy
http://www.jayscheib.com
Jay Scheib, Assistant Professor, Music and Theatre Arts, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Building 10-267,
Cambridge MA 02139-4307 | [email protected] | studio 617-253-6961 | hm 617-776-1745 | mobile 917-612-2137