The footage on this page has been compiled as a discussion topic on the rehearsal process. You can see actors re-working scenes with advice from the director and actors experimenting with character moments. The footage was shot over two consecutive rehearsal days in the first week of rehearsal. The rehearsal period for An exploration of The Caucasian Chalk Circle was three weeks in length.

If you would like to participate in discussion on the rehearsal process of An exploration of The Caucasian Chalk Circle visit the billboards section of Theatre Space and login to the Caucasian Chalk Circle billboard in the public section.

To view the full teachers notes for this production visit:
http://www.qldtheatreco.com.au/education/teachers_notes

Director and Youth & Education Manager, Joseph Mitchell, discusses the production.

What elements of The Caucasian Chalk Circle made you choose to include it in the new Education Performance season for 2007?

I was a university student when first introduced to Brecht and found his plays difficult to read. There were so many characters, the language was oddly poetic and the stories were often complex and overwhelming. It wasn’t until I actually saw some of Brecht’s plays performed that I developed a greater understanding of Brecht as an artist. Being aware that nearly all students doing senior drama touch on Brecht at some stage, I knew that we should be staging a Brecht play so that every student would have the opportunity to see what his plays look like on stage while studying his ideas and theories about theatre in the classroom.

The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a play that has fascinated me for years. The vast array of characters jump off the page with all the complex contradictions of life. In addition to the characters, the imagery is astounding: the rickety bridge, the palace revolution and the Caucus Mountains are so rich with detail.

Playwright Howard Barker once said that anyone who writes a play and allows their imagination to be limited by the conventions of the theatre itself is writing a play which is already dead. Brecht was an expert at thinking outside the box and The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a great example of this. The play feels like a trapeze without a safety net and there is a real sense of danger in directing this play and I love that feeling because it pushes you into new territory as an artist and when you push yourself into new territory, hopefully you take the audience in the same direction.

What do you think young audiences will appreciate about this play?

It’s hard to produce professional shows in Australia today which require casts of 20 actors and 6 live musicians because it is so expensive and the risks are quite high. For this reason, Brecht’s plays are more inaccessible than ever to young audiences and this is a shame because so many young people who have studied Brecht don’t get a chance to see his work the way it was meant to be seen – up on stage. With this in mind, I think that young audiences will primarily appreciate the fact that they can see the work of one of the great playwrights being performed on stage right here in Brisbane.

In addition to actually just seeing Brecht performed on stage, audiences will also appreciate how such an epic play can be realised effectively with a small group of people and a very small budget. It’s great to see large scale productions with huge casts in the theatre but I think there is more value for young people to see how a small group of professional actors can creatively tell a very large story in a simple and effective way. This is something which I am very passionate about because at the end of the day, there are only three things you need to put on a play: text, actors, and space. This production should inspire young people to be able to look at any text and think about ways to perform it creatively rather than burdening themselves with unnecessary concerns such as cast size and set design.

What approaches to the rehearsal process did you consider for this production?

The first departure point for us in rehearsal was to leave Brecht’s theory at the door. Brecht for me was primarily a great playwright. During his 40 years of devotion to the theatre, Brecht continually published ideas, theories and self-reflections about the potential of the theatre by questioning his own beliefs and practice. All this self-reflection has become the canon of Brecht’s theory. I didn’t want this theory to get in the way of just trying to put on a good play. I believe that the ideas Brecht formulated will be seen by the audience when they watch the play. The responsibility for the actors in rehearsal was to trust the language of the playwright and get the play up with a focus on character and story rather than spending too much time discussing the ideas driven by Brecht’s theory.

The next approach in rehearsal was just full-steam ahead. We have condensed the story but there is still a lot to get through. The actors have had to work extremely hard in this production to play anywhere between 6 – 12 characters each! This is a daunting task for the actors and we had to find the balance between allowing them time to play with so many characters while also meeting the rehearsal deadlines.

What advice would you give to aspiring directors?

I have found that directing is something that evolves with time, age and experience. If you’re interested at a young age, that’s a good sign, but don’t lose sight of all the potential pathways that will make YOU an interesting director. If you focus on just wanting to be a director you may bypass all the interesting things that can actually make you a good director. Before directing, I was a professional swimmer, amateur actor, office worker, uni student, camera operator and film editor. These things are unique to me and for several reasons the culmination of these things led towards directing. Don’t feel like you have to just work at being a director from a young age. Take your time trying out life and then at some stage, it becomes clear that directing is what you do, and that’s when you really get serious about it.