The Caucasian Chalk Circle

The Caucasian Chalk Circle 

On November 11, I watched Cheshire Academy Fall Production ‘The Caucasian Chalk Circle’ at Black box. The play is directed by Ms.Guarino, and actors and actresses include Sam Weed, Peter Deng, Amalia Gutierrez, Aaron Luo, David Mathisson, Linda Li, Jason Lin, Erin King, Zoe Genden, Helen Zheng and Krystal Charter. In this review I will be focusing on the staging, acting and sone of my personal opinions of this great performance.

Firstly, the story a peasant girl who rescues a baby and becomes a better mother than its wealthy natural parents. Eventually the judge decides to give the baby to Grusha (Sam Weed). The play involves in multiple themes, such as love, justice, status and conflict. 

A good play always has a great start, so does this one. The actors and actresses come in and all sit in front of the audience, while the slow music is playing which creates a smooth atmosphere. The light is dim at the start, which makes the audience have a mysterious sense that something historical is going to happen. All actors and actresses leave until the music fishies which is around two to three minutes long, this length of time is really perfect, because normally, when the play first starts, audience are not paying full attention, so a long and slow music can make them focus and be engaged to the play. Another compelling thing is that the design of the stage. Since the black box is relatively small for a long and big play like ‘The Caucasian Chalk Circle’, the stage is really simple and there aren’t much changes of colors of lights, and lights are all in fixed places. This is effective because the more simple it is, the more understandable for the audience. The stairs at the down part of the stage is used as a transition stage, and also sometimes used to show the high and low status. For the acting part, it was just truly amazing, especially what Linda did was impressive. When she is acting as Natella Abashwili, the use of her body language is good, in order to show her high status and her arrogance, she stands straight and looks up, as if she thinks she is better than everyone. Also she talks with a mean tone when she is talking to servants. To sum up, both acting and staging are extremely well designed and I could see that they really put in some deep thoughts in it. The story is told by a narrator. This is really effective because narrator’s explanations can help audience to understand the content correctly.

In all these fantastic actors and actresses, my favorite would be Sam Weed, who is acting Grusha Vashnadze in the play. During the performance, she speaks clearly and loudly and she is really good at using body language and facial expressions to show her inner thoughts. For instance, when she hears that the milk costs a lot if money, she wants to feed the baby, but also she is hesitating wether she really wants to or not. She shows it by using good facial expression, she is looking nervous and as if she is considering. Another interesting part would be in the last scene when the judge puts the baby in the circle and let both moms to pull the baby, but Sam kneels in front of the judge to beg him to let she keep the baby. Her use of body language really shows how great her love is to her baby.


In conclusion, this play truly impressed me. All staging, designing and acting were perfect and all actors and actresses cooperate really well. The stage is kept simple and easy to switch scenes. Actors and actresses all put in a hundred percent of hard work and focus. The love by mother portrayed by Sam Weed really touches my heart by her realistic acting skills. 

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