Linda Li’s Director vision

Linda Li

Mrs. Guarino

IB Theater HL

23 October 2018

Linda Li’s Director Vision of The Caucasian Chalk Circle

    When we cheerfully completed the play The Caucasian Chalk Circle last year in the Black Box theater, the images and the script were stamped into my brain. The Caucasian Chalk Circle was about a peasant girl, Grusha who rescued a baby, Michael, and became a better mother than its wealthy natural parents, George Abashwilli and Natella Abashwilli. For the particular scene that I have chose from the play, which is the scene that Natella screaming and fighting the judge Azdak because he decided that Grusha would be Michael’s official guardian and her own property would be taken for public usage, I have decided to plot the scene again by in a independent and different way. Additionally, I was inspired by Mr. Aronson’s style of arranging the scenes of the play and the very aggressive and powerful image of Natella Abashwilli who is one of the most important important role of the play. Since I was perpetuated with the taste and overwhelmed in the atmosphere of the play during the rehearsals and performances of the play, especially by the powerful image of Natella. Also, there was a TV serie called Reign on Netflix inspired and influenced me too, because the Reign is also in the similar history setting of old England and does a nice job at depicting strong and aggressive female ruler images. This helped me to understand and to picture the role of Natella and others around her as well.

Here, I included a simple scratch of my ranging of my stage-arrangement for the particular scene and it was quite self-explainable. The lighting of the stage will be simple at the beginning of the play; and it turns into dark green on Natella and Azdak when they are fighting and deep red on the others to highlight the nature of being absurd and surprising and Natella’s aggressive characteristic and intense anger. The sound of the stage would be pretty much the screaming and yelling of Natella and her arguing with Azdak. Also, I intended to separate the parties on the stage by grouping the members of each side together. For example, on the left side of the table in the upstage center, I grouped people of a family together, which are Simon, Grusha, and Michael; while on the right side of the table, there are Natella’s lawyers and guards, which basically means “It is Natella Abashvilli’s territory and I have guards.” In front of table, Natella was screaming and “fighting” for his property and her son. What was unique about my stage was that the audience stage was actually lower than the actual show. And it was used to honor the role and importance of theater. My goal was to actually participate in a musical production and would be able to rearrange other scenes of different plays. For me, I wish any participations and contact with theater is worthy and funny too. However, it is a great show.