In my last post I mentioned that I had been lucky enough to land a part in Covenant College's production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertol Brect. Since most of my evening and some of my afternoons are now spent rehearsing, it's become a pretty big part of life here at Covenant for me. Thus, I now dedicate an entire blog post to it.
Our production of Chalk Circle is being directed by Theater Professor Claire Slavovsky, (or as we all call her "Prof. Slav") She's an excellent director and has managed to get the play running (more or less) smoothly a week before we open (even though we only had a month to get from start to finish in the first place).
While the plot of Chalk Circle is far too confusing to relate without actually seeing the play, I'll give a basic synopsis. Chalk Circle is a parody of goverment, war, and justice in general. The plot revolves around two main characters, Grusha and Azdak. Grusha, a peasant girl, is forced to take the child of the Governor of a city in Georgia (the country not the state) after a Prince (me!) stages a coup and has the governor's head chopped off. While protecting the baby, she eventually adopts it as her own. Meanwhile, Azdak, a villiage scriviner, becomes the judge of the general area and begins a chaotic reign of "justice" that favors the poor. (He is sort of an analog for Soloman, but that doesn't really come in until the end).
It's quite funny, and my synopsis doesn't do it justice. Anyway, the other actors are really great. I was even "adopted" by Senior Alysha McCullough. Basically it just means that we get into poke fights backstage. :) Other cast members include "Mitchell" Mitchell (who refuses to go by his first name because he shares it with a certain college which we are rivals with), Janel Corbett, Jacob Corbett, Adrianne Belz, Katie Jenkins, Johnathan Davis, Kevin Hartzell, Liz Simpson, Cornelius Hegeman, Autumn Brown, Wes Simmonds, Ben Burge, Krista Burnett, and Kate Serafolean (I really hope I spelled that right).
We open next Thursday (Oct. 1) and so far things are running well. We have great costumes thanks to Winter Cawley (an exact clone of Megan Ring, for those of you who know Megan). Hopefully things go well. I'm really enjoying doing Chalk Circle, and I'm looking forward to our rehearsal in half an hour. Anyway, until next time. M'aa Salaama (Arabic for "Peace be with you" or "See Ya!")
I completely forgot to mention one of the biggest parts of the show! We have an all original set of music composed by student Justin Johns. Why I forgot to mention this is beyond me since even now I have one of the pieces stuck in my head. (Curse you Justin, for writing such a catchy tune for Azdak and Shauwa to sing!) :)
ReplyDelete