5:37pm Thursday 3rd September 2009
The plays of Bertolt Brecht are not the usual fodder for amateur dramatic groups, being as they are heavy on politics and theatrical experimentation.
However, director Marc Batten, 38, has picked The Caucasian Chalk Circle as Teddington Theatre Club’s new production and is confident his version will make an evening at the theatre with Brecht a memorable one.
“People have these pre-conceived notions of classic plays and can think they are boring,” he says. “You tend to see one version of a Brecht play and that sticks with you. The versions I don't enjoy are slow and add dramatic weight to everything.
“I wanted to make my version pacey and exciting for a modern audience and I have told the cast I want them to zip through the story.”
The story they are going to zip through is set in Russia just after the end of the Second World War, beginning with two groups of peasants arguing over a piece of land that has been abandoned by the German forces.
To try to solve the dispute, one group performs the story of the chalk circle, in which a widowed governor’s wife abandons her child to her maid and escapes a war-torn country, only to return years later and attempt to reclaim the child.
Since joining Teddington Theatre Club after leaving university, Batten has performed in numerous productions and has taken the reins as director on several occasions. His new version of The Caucasian Chalk Circle continues his tradition of bringing a fresh twist to well-known classics.
“I did a radical transformation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, setting it in India,” he says.
“I like to take classics and give them a brush-up and reinvent them. For The Caucasian Chalk Circle, we have gone back to Greek movement styles, so we have actors on stage doing symbolic movements. It is a mixture of Greek chorus movements and modern physical theatre.”
By day, Batten is head of drama at a school in Southall and is expecting plenty of his pupils to watch the show.
“A number of them are coming and they are very excited, although they prefer it when I am acting in the shows,” he says.
“I think, to be a good teacher, I have to put my money where my mouth is and the more theatre I do outside school the better it will be for my teaching.”
The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Hampton Hill Playhouse, 90 High Street, September 13 to 19 (Sun 6pm, Mon to Sat 7.45pm), £10/£8, call 0845 838 7529, visit ttc-boxoffice.org.uk
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