Seattle Waldorf High School Presents: The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht

Dear Friends and Families of SWHS,
It is with great excitement that we invite you to see our production of Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle! This is the story of a young woman who suddenly finds herself in the unlikely position of saving a child from a burning city, and her epic journey of becoming a mother.
We are busily creating costumes, armor, a cityscape, mountains, puppets, shadow puppet animations, masks, and music to bring this story to life, all as a celebration of the imagination… Show more and talents of our students. In their designs we encouraged our students to re-purpose found materials to give these single-serving objects a second life. To that end in the coming weeks we will be constructing costume elements with newspaper, cardboard, plastic, and fabrics. Weaving this recycled reality using a combination of sewing, velcroing, and hot-gluing, the new and the old will be joined together Current events (newspapers) becoming samurai-like armor. The Pixel becoming a stone wall. A bedspread becoming the world traveler's cloak. Our visual aesthetic is sustainability integrated with planned obsolescence.
The core themes of the Chalk Circle are rich and vital:
Nature vs. nurture, and what it means to care for someone who depends on you
Compassion and kindness in the face of ugliness
Justice turned upside down to balance the scales
The price at home of a war abroad
This play is not a musical. It is a play with music. The lyrics are there, but we are creating all new music for this show. We are choosing what we want to bring to it. This whole piece is geared towards a deep, creative experience for our students in several artistic disciplines, to take ownership of this potent material, to engage in courageous conversations, to take a serious look out into the world while strengthening the community around us.

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