The Ball State University Department of Theatre will perform a play that reflects the stresses people face in times of war tonight at the University Theatre.
Composed by German playwright Bertolt Brecht in the years directly following World War II, "The Caucasian Chalk Circle" will be performed as part of the Mainstage Series.
The theater department received $15,000 from the Center for Media Design, which it used to buy a Sanyo video projector and other equipment that will be used in the production, Blackmer said.
Blackmer received a similar grant last year for a multi-media project called "Reality TV Bytes," which spoofed reality TV shows, she said.
Blackmer said the equipment purchased for "Circle" will help give the production an added edge.
"[A student audience] is a much more visual audience," she said. "Students think differently with the advent of personal computer. The video provides another set of images. It really kind of works together with what the actors are doing to create this world."
Ball State senior AJ Wright, who portrays the governor and Azdak in the play, said "Circle's" plot is a timely one.
"It describes what makes a family and what it takes to do the right thing in a situation, even if it goes against societal norms," Wright said. "It takes place during a time of war and kind of captures the confusion of the present conflict in Iraq."
Ball State junior Courtney Hawkins, who portrays the palace kitchen maid, Gursha, said the cast has worked tirelessly on the production.
The play is set during an unspecified war in the Caucus Mountains of Georgia. The governor is killed during a coup, and his kitchen maid adopts his son, Michael, portrayed by Tom Bloxham, because his wife has fled. The governor's wife returns five years later and demands that Michael be returned to her. The unconventional judge Azdak puts the child in the middle of a chalk circle and agrees to grant custody of the child to the woman who can pull him from the circle.
The production features original music by professor of music theory and composition Jody Nagel with video and multimedia design courtesy of New York artist Tony Brown, a colleague of the play's director, Jennifer Blackmer.
Bertolt Brecht, playwright and author of "Circle," incorporated then-new technology like stills and slides when he directed his own plays to emphasize the theatrical nature of the play, Blackmer said.
"I thought I would take the opportunity to explore how a video design can influence live theatre," Blackmer said.
Brecht was strongly influenced by a type of art known as Agitprop or Agitation Propaganda that tended to be very political.
"He believed strongly in theater for social change," she said. "He used technology and music to break up the narrative."
The author used the effects to help the audience understand the underlying themes in his plays, Blackmer said.
"He encourages you to think of social conditions," she said. "His plays would resolve, but not in ways the audience expects."
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