The Caucasian Chalk Circle

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Description

The city burns in the heat of civil war and a servant girl sacrifices everything to protect an abandoned child. But when peace is finally restored, the boy's mother comes to claim him. Calling upon the ancient tradition of the Chalk Circle, a comical judge sets about resolving the dispute. But in a culture of corruption and deception, who wins Written by the grand master of storytelling and peopled with vivid and amusing characters, this is one of the greatest plays of the last century. This Caucasian Chalk Circle is translated by award-winning writer Alistair Beaton, who also wrote the bitingly witty stage play Feelgood and the celebrated TV dramas The Trial of Tony Blair and A Very Social Secretary. The play was toured by Shared Experience in 2009.

Reviews

'an adept new translation by Alistair Beaton' * Dominic Maxwell, The Times, 2.10.09 *
The Caucasian Chalk Circle, written in 1944 while he was in exile from Germany, gives some epic illumination to socialist ideas about ownership and injustice. But more than that it's a story about love winning out over endemic corruption' * Dominic Maxwell, The Times, 2.10.09 *
The play is translated, with political wit and crisp clarity, by Alistair Beaton . . . The result is a Chalk Circle which makes an unarguable case for the continued relevance both of Brecht's theatrical aesthetics and his allegorical subject matter. * Telegraph *
Alistair Beatons sharp rhythmic translation finds a contemporary relevance too, but not intrusively so. * Stage *

Author Bio

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) is acknowledged as one of the great dramatists whose writing has had a major influence on the theatre. His landmark plays include The Threepenny Opera, The Life of Galileo and Mother Courage and her Children. Alistair Beaton's plays and translations include Feelgood, King of Hearts and Follow My Leader and Max Frisch's The Arsonists. For television, he wrote the award-winning A Very Social Secretary (2005) and the Channel 4 film The Trial of Tony Blair (2007).