Brecht In Rehearsal

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30898, 3 November 1965, Page 9

Brecht In Rehearsal

The first Christchurch per formance of Bertolt Brecht’s “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” will be presented by the Canterbury Repertory Theatre Society’s training course players for a three-night season in December. The play has 90 characters and all the students will take part. The society’s resident producer, John Kim, has had

-a hand in the production, which is, however, mostly the students’ own work. Brecht wrote the play in the United States in 1944-45 and it was performed there in English. The first performance in Germany was in 1954 with Brecht’s wife, Helene Weigel, in the role of the governor’s wife. The Story concerns a revolt in feudal Georgia and the flight to the mountains of Grusha, a servant girl, with the govenor’s small son, who has been abandoned in the panic by his mother. A drunken village clerk, Azdak, is appointed a judge by the rebellious soldiers and presides over the courst when an attempt is made to take the baby from Grusha. “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” is one of the four plays chosen for the opening of New York's Lincoln Centre theatre late this year. Brecht, Germany’s formost modern playwright, was born at Augsburg in 1898. He left Germany when Hitler came to power in 1933, eventually

reacnihg the United States where he wrote “The Life of Galileo,” "Mother Courage” and “The Caucasian Chalk Circle,” the latter a popular study by drama students because many of its episodes may be presented as short entities.

Possibly because of his United States exile, Brecht’s plays are widely performed there is well as in Europe, to which he returned after the war to found the Berliner Ensemble.

The training course production will be the student’s last this year. They already have three Sunday Theatre Club plays to their credit.

BRECHT RADIO CLASSIC Bertolt Brecht’s “The Trial of Lucullus” is one of the classics of radio drama. Written in 1938 as a protest against Hitler and his works and first broadcast in 1940, it has since been adapted as a play and as an opera. Lucullus, the great general, dies and his catafalque is carried through Rome so that the people may pay honour to the great hero. When the shade of Lucullus passes to the other world he is judged on his services to humanity, not on his military triumphs. The N.Z.B.C. production of the play will be broadcast from 3YC on Friday evening.