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The two performances of Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1948), one at Berlin in
October 1954 and the one at the Frankfort-on-the-Main in Frankfurt in April 1955, differed on a
single count. The performance at Frankfurt did not include the 'Prologue' to the play.1 It is true that
on many occasions directors choose to edit the playscript for time but that was certainly not the case
here. The reason behind the decision of the director Harry Buckwitz becomes apparent from the
reviews of the performance in the Frankfurt papers. At the mildest the 'Prologue' was termed
avoidable. Others described it as a product of the red pencil and a tribute of Brecht's to the red
bosses to a social order.
Frankfurt and Berlin belonged to two different countries West and East Germany respectively
two belonging to two different ideological camps. Divided after the victory of the Allied forces over
Nazi Germany, West Germany followed the capitalist path of development and was part of the
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), while East Germany followed the Soviet model of
planned economy with greater control of the government. It is clear that the approval granted by
West German press to the deletion of the 'Prologue' to The Caucasian Chalk Circle was an
ideological response. Precisely so as Brecht's inclusion of the 'Prologue' was an ideological choice.
In fact, The Caucasian Chalk Circle is an example of Brecht's commitment to the socialist
worldview in his theatrical practice.
The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a story about a servant girl Grusha who suffers tremendous
hardships in order to protect the life of baby Michael, the heir to the Governor who is overthrown
by his brother the Fat Prince. Michael was earlier abandoned by his mother Natella, who was too
busy protecting her clothes. Grusha's hardships include having to part with her savings to buy milk
for Michael, running away from the province when Simon, a soldier in the Governor's forces had
already offered to marry her, facing the taunts of his sister-in-law when she seeks shelter for
Michael in their house, marrying an old man against her desires to provide a safe identity for
Michael apart from exposing herself to the tedious weather and climes of the Caucasus. Despite
her efforts she is captured by the Iron Shirts who serve the Fat Prince. Meanwhile the Grand Duke,
the ruler, returns and the Fat Prince is overthrown from the province.
A dispute ensues between Grusha and Natella over the motherhood of the child. Natella needs
Michael to support her claim to the Governor's estates. The judge Azdak places the child at the
centre of a chalk circle and asks to two women to pull the child. He suggests that the child will be
handed over to the woman who succeeds in pulling him out of the circle. In both attempts it is
Natella who is successful. Grusha, who has developed maternal instinct towards Michael refuses to
pull. Azdak hands over Michael to Grusha.
The story of the play is based on the legend of the 'Chinese Chalk Circle' but Brecht's treatment has
one crucial difference. In the 'Chinese Chalk Circle' it is the biological mother who does not pull the
1 Kerz (1968). 51.
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The A-effect
The term A-effect (or 'Verfremdungseffekt' in German, 'V-effect' in short) was first used by Brecht
in 1935 after he witnessed the performance of Mei Lan-fang's Chinese theatre troupe in Moscow.
The term also seems to be a rough translation of the concept of 'Priem Ostrannenija' or 'device for
making strange' used by the Russian critic Viktor Shklovskij. Brecht must have come in
acquaintance of the term during his Moscow visit.1 Even earlier, Brecht was familiar with similar
literary techniques devised by the Russian Formalists due to the visits to Berlin of Soviet
modernists like Sergei Eisenstein or Sergei Tretyakov. As is clear from Brecht's writings since the
late 1920s, he had been experimenting with techniques of preventing empathy. The term A-effect
proved to him to be an overarching term for the various mechanisms to defamiliarize the action on
stage in the perspective of the audience.2
The elements that go into the making of the A-effect can be categorized into three 1) elements
related to set-design and structuring of the auditorium; 2) elements related to the scripting of the
play; and 3) the performance elements. The Epic Theatre experiments related to set design and the
auditorium benefited greatly from the Brecht-Piscator collaboration. They made use of all available
5
6
1
2
Ibid. 71.
Ibid. 60.
Ibid. 99.
'Alienation effect' is not a literal translation of the German term 'Verfremdungseffekt' but a close approximate. It
would be better to understand the technique in terms of the dramatic processes involved rather than derive its sense
from the term itself. As, Fredric Jameson has elucidated, the Epic Theatre term 'alienation' should not be confused
with the Marxian concept of 'alienation' which is 'Entfremdung' in German. (Jameson. Op cit. 85-86 fn.)
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Ibid. 203.
Allana (1993). 26
Ibid. 121-29.
The proscenium stage is defined as a stage which is walled on three sides and the audience seated on the fourth side.
The performance style assumes that a 'Fourth Wall' separates the stage and the audience, and that the audience is
privy to the action on stage through the 'Fourth Wall'. So the proscenium space presents the action as if it is real life
and not a performance.
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Gestus
The term 'gestus' like 'verfremdung' is difficult to be translated into English. It can be roughly
translated as 'social attitudes' or 'social gestures' that is, the response of a social being in a given
situation. 'Gesture' is not the particular movement of hands or the head as a response to stimulus or
to draw someone's attention. It seeks to reveal the attitudes that human beings adopt towards other
human beings on the basis of their relative social status. As Brecht explained:
Not all gests are social gests. The attitude of chasing away a fly is not yet a social gest, though
the attitude of chasing away a dog may be one, for instance if it comes to represent a badly
dressed man's continual battle against watchdogs. One's efforts to keep one's balance on a
slippery surface result in a social gest as soon as falling down would mean 'losing face'; in other
words, losing one's market value . the social gest is the gest relavant to society, the gest that
allows conclusions to be drawn about the social circumstances.1
The focus in Epic Theatre on the 'social gest' assumes importance because of its disdain towards the
sketching of a complete character of an individual on the stage. It is true that even in naturalistic
theatre it is only the main protagonist who is sketched to any degree of fullness, while only certain
aspects of the other characters come to light. Naturalistic theatre places the individual at the centre
of the action. It finds its causality in individual motives and characteristics. Epic Theatre, however,
views the individual as a product of social conditions and finds the individual's response to
incidents around him as responses to human inter-relationships. Thus The Caucasian Chalk Circle
presents a contrast between two acts of the payment - Grusha paying two piasters to buy milk for
Michael and the Grand Duke's offer of 100,000 piasters to Azdak for a night's lodging. For Grusha
two piasters is equivalent of two weeks wages for her, whereas for the Grand Duke the offer amount
was only a small fraction of his treasury. The same act of paying for a service emerges out of two
contrasting situations: the actor playing Grusha would be called on to demonstrate the initial
hesitation in her when the price for the milk is quoted for she would in normal circumstances not be
in a position for such luxury. She cannot be seen as parting with the money too readily. But her
decision to pay for the milk would ultimately highlight the relationship of affection and care which
she has developed towards Michael. On the other hand, the actor playing the character of the Grand
Duke would be required to show the readiness with which he is willing to pay such a huge amount
10 Benjamin (1988). Op cit. 11.
1 Brecht. Op cit. 104-05.
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Bibliography
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Associates.
Benjamin, Walter (1988). Understanding Brecht. Anna Bostock trans. London and New York,
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Brecht, Bertolt (1979). Brecht on Theatre. John Willet trans. New Delhi, Radha Krishna
Prakashan.
Brecht, Bertolt (1996). The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Heinemann.
Brecht, Bertolt (2002). The Messingkauf Dialogues. John Willet trans. London, Methuen.
Bunge, Hans-Joachim and Bayard Quincy Morgan (1959). 'The Dispute over the Valley: An
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Stanislavsky, Constantin (1986). Building a Character. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood trans.
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Stourac, Richard and Kathleen McCreery (1986). Theatre as a Weapon: Workers Theatre in the
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Arjun Ghosh teaches at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of
Technology Delhi, New Delhi. He was formerly Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study,
Shimla.
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