The Bench Production
This play was staged at Havant Arts Centre, East Street Havant - Bench Theatre's home since 1977.
Below is an alphabetical list of the 15 actors who worked on this production. Each individual actor played many of the 70 character parts within the play.
Characters
| Sharman Callam | Paul Davies | Ruth Murfitt |
| Jack Clausen | Sue Dawes | Vaughn Price |
| Ingrid Corrigan | Sam Emery | Ruth Prior |
| Peter Corrigan | Robin Hall | Mark Wakeman |
| Zoë Corrigan | David Hill | Alan Welton |
Crew
| Director | David Penrose |
| Stage Manager | Paul Millington |
| Properties Manager | Derek Callam |
| Costume Design | Sue Dawes Megan Utley |
| Masks | Sue Dawes |
| Music Composers | Jack Clausen Vaughn Price Alice Corrigan |
| Set Design | David Penrose |
| Lighting Design | Jacquie Penrose |
| Lighting Operator | Andrew Caple |
| Poster Design | Pete Woodward |
| Photographs | Tim Taylor |
| Programme Editor | Derek Callam |
| Front of House | Tim Taylor |
Director's Notes
Brecht started to write 'The Caucasian Chalk Circle' during World War II. He was a man in exile from his own country, having left Hitler's Germany for his own good in 1933. His young family was still scattered across the neutral countries of Europe. Brecht could not know whether he would see all of his children again. After the war was over Brecht revised the play. In 1954, when his theatre company, the Berliner Ensemble, was eventually given its own theatre in East Berlin, 'The Caucasian Chalk Circle' was one of the first plays staged there, out of a huge suitcase of his own plays that he had never seen performed.
The play is about the impact of war on a poor country. It asks what kind of wisdom is needed when the war is over and the farmsteads of remote communities have been destroyed by a conflict not of their making. How do ordinary people make sense out of a chaos they did not invite? How do people stay true to their humanity when they have no resources left? At the time Brecht wrote the play, and ever since, there has always been somewhere in the world where these questions are being asked.
When two farming communities meet to decide how best to put things together again after the war, Brecht makes what otherwise might have been dry politics into something human and vivid by the simple staging of another play within the play that starts. The villagers return to their ravaged valleys and re-enact an ancient story, The Legend of the Chalk Circle. It puts them back in touch with more timeless values: the natural justice of a woman's love for a child, the love of family and friends for a place shared for centuries, and the common humanity of individuals faced with hardship, at least trying to resist the temptation to merely exploit each other to survive.
I do love 'The Caucasian Chalk Circle'. I'm a drama teacher at Havant College and have already made two productions of this marvellous play with students. It has so much action and so many parts to play that it has always been a favourite with schools and youth theatre groups - and quite rightly too. But it has to be said that the play has been somewhat high-jacked by young actors. It is rare to see it performed by a company like ours - with fifteen actors from sixteen to sixty. The Bench has developed its theatrical skills over the years by working on many kinds of play. 'The Caucasian Chalk Circle' allows us to bring all that experience to bear on a rich theatrical masterpiece, using imaginative invention, masks and music, vocal and physical acting skills to populate an epic tale with over fifty characters. The last scene alone is worth the ticket money!
David Penrose
Reviews
The NewsNeil Pugmire
Play director's expertise shines through
Two rival groups try to rebuild their poverty-stricken central Asian country after the ravages of war. Sound familiar? That's the plot of Bertolt Brecht's classic, which recent events have made even more pertinent. In his play, Georgian farmers settle their differences and remind themselves of the values of dignity and humanity by staging another play. Would that real life was as simple!
This staple of school and college production is in safe hands with Havant's experienced Bench Theatre Company. Director David Penrose has staged the play twice before. It shows in his expert handling of more than 70 characters, umpteen props and dozens of costume changes. He finds solutions to potentially tricky problems of staging scenes next to a glacier, on a creaky bridge and in an attic bedroom.
Each of the ensemble cast of 15 switches effortlessly from character to character, bringing real depth to even the minutest of cameo parts. Sam Emery's singing voice impressed, as did Ingrid Corrigan as the heroine's mother-in-law and Ruth Prior as a granny.
The original music works well, comic moments are rarely missed, and the pace hardly slackens. From tomorrow until Saturday.
The News, 23rd November 2001
