Play: The Caucasian Chalk Circle

Overview
Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a parable play, written in 1944 and first staged in 1948, that blends folklore, political argument, and epic theatre techniques. It is framed by a modern dispute over land in the Caucasus and unfolds as a play-within-a-play about rightful ownership, care, and justice. Guided by a Singer who narrates, comments, and punctuates scenes with songs, the story juxtaposes the flight of a servant girl who saves an abandoned infant with the rise of an unorthodox judge whose rulings favor the poor. The drama culminates in a famous trial with a chalk circle test that decides who truly deserves the child.

Frame and setting
After the Second World War in Soviet Georgia, two collective farms contest the right to a fertile valley. The Fruit Growers propose an irrigation plan to make the land flourish; the Goat Herders want to return with their flocks. A Singer proposes a tale as a lens through which to view the dispute. The community agrees to hear the story, which becomes the inner play and supplies a principle the villagers will later apply: things should belong to those who care for them and can use them well.

The parable: Grusha and the child
In the city of Grusinia, a coup topples Governor Georgi Abashvili. Amid the chaos, his wife, Natella, flees in panic, fussing over gowns and property deeds and leaving behind their baby, Michael. Grusha, a kitchen maid, impulsively rescues the child. Hunted by the usurper’s Ironshirts, she undertakes a perilous mountain journey, spending her meager savings, outwitting soldiers, and risking her life to safeguard the boy. She hopes to reunite with her fiancé, Simon, a soldier, but the war and the child complicate that hope.

To protect Michael with a legal name and shelter, Grusha marries Yussup, a supposedly dying peasant who recovers as soon as he has a wife to serve him. The marriage estranges her from Simon when he returns and misreads the situation. Years pass; Grusha raises the child with devotion while the political tide turns. When the Grand Duke is restored, Natella’s lawyers seek Michael not out of maternal feeling but to secure the Abashvili estates, which by law require the heir’s presence.

Azdak the judge
In a comic yet caustic counterplot, Azdak, a scruffy village scribe, shelters a fugitive who turns out to be the Grand Duke. Through a twist of fate and the soldiers’ incompetence, Azdak is made judge. During the regime’s reversals he survives and presides over cases with a rough-and-ready sense of justice, siding with the poor and exposing the absurdities of legal formalism. His bench becomes a theatre of the class struggle: he fines the rich, pardons the desperate, and subordinates property claims to human need.

The chalk circle and resolution
Grusha and Natella appear before Azdak to contest custody of Michael. Natella arrives with bristling lawyers and estate documents; Grusha stands with no papers but years of care. Azdak draws a circle in chalk and orders each woman to pull the child from it. Grusha refuses to hurt the boy and lets go; Natella pulls without compunction. Recognizing real motherhood in the refusal to cause harm, Azdak awards the child to Grusha. He annuls her marriage to Yussup so she can reunite with Simon, and he redistributes Natella’s properties for public good. Having delivered justice that privileges use and care over title, Azdak disappears as abruptly as he entered.

Themes and style
The play advances a clear thesis: ownership is legitimized by stewardship, not by birth or wealth. Through songs, direct address, projected titles, and episodic structure, Brecht distances sentimentality while sharpening social critique. Grusha’s quiet heroism and Azdak’s subversive jurisprudence converge to argue that a society’s resources and children alike should be entrusted to those who will sustain them. The frame returns to the valley, which is awarded to those who will irrigate and cultivate it, echoing the parable’s verdict.