'Caucasian Chalk Circle' Is More Than Unconventional

Even after 700 years, Caucasian Chalk Circle is still very much an experimental play, or maybe it's just plain unconventional. Raucous one moment, lyrical the next, this play within a play almost defies modern audiences to dig for the meaning and message that lies within. Those willing to make the effort, however, will be rewarded with some substantial philosophical bones on which to chew.

Director  Melissa Chalsma and a cast of CSUN students presented the premiere performance Friday night at the campus Experimental Theater. Considering the complexity of the production, with its singing, dancing and small army of characters, the results exceeded expectations.

In the original Chinese version, Circle of Chalk, created during the Yuan dynasty, the play came down to a contest for custody between a child's real mother, the second wife of a now-deceased tax collector, and the evil, powerful first wife who will stop at nothing to claim the child as her own.

By the time Bertolt Brecht got through with it in 1940, it was more than a morality play which echoed King Solomon's famous  biblical justice. It was also a satiric appraisal of justice under capitalism and a powerful argument that ownership should be vested in those who nurture and care for something, whether it's a field, a farm or, in this case, a baby.  Of course, without knowing Brecht's Marxist proclivities, that important point could easily get lost among the parade of peasants, soldiers, singers, farmers and government officials.

The first clue this is no ordinary drama comes when several actors emerge to set the stage and occasionally chat among themselves and with the audience. That unusual opening foretells the play within a play that is to come.

In the first scene, Soviet Georgian residents engage in a spirited postwar dispute over whether a valley should be used for fruit trees or revert to its original use by goat herders. That conflict is quickly settled, leading to the arrival of the Singer and a troupe of entertainers with a much longer tale to spin.

They present the story of a servant girl, Grusha, who rescues the baby of an assassinated governor and his self-involved wife. Grusha risks life and limb to provide for the child and take him into the hills and away from the civil war. Later, we meet Azdak, a rogue who becomes a judge and dispenses justice much as Groucho Marx might.  ("You want justice but you don't want to pay for it," he scolds one litigant who has not offered a bribe.)

Ultimately, Azdak must decide whether the baby should be returned to its mother, the preening governor's wife, or to the servant girl who risked everything to care for the infant.

Grusha is pivotal to the entire production and Eveling Cerda, who plays her, does an admirable job of convincing the audience in the round (actually, square) of the hardship she endures. Cerda is not as successful at expressing the maternal instinct that motivates her--she rarely comforts or even interacts with the baby-- but that's partly because Brecht doesn't afford her the opportunity.

Other performances are noteworthy as well, particularly the actors who played Azdak and the Singer. (Perhaps, for the sake of simplicity, the 24 actors in the production were not identified in the playbill with the role or roles they played. Brecht may have approved that communal approach but it left the audience bewildered.)

Following Friday night's premiere, Caucasian Chalk Circle is scheduled to be performed at 2 p.m. Sunday, as well as 7:30 p.m. Dec. 1, 2 and 3 and 2 p.m. Dec. 4. The Valley Performing Arts Center is at 18111 Nordhoff Street Northridge. The box office can be reached at 818-677-2488.