Kathmandu:

A special demonstration of The Caucasian Chalk Circle was staged at Gurukul on December 26. The story revolved around a king and his beautiful wife who is used to living an extravagant life and later on the king’s younger brother taking the king captive and gaining power. And there is the king’s young child who is left behind when the queen escapes with only her material possessions and leaving back her own child and a maid who takes the child into her care. And so ends the play, which is only one part of the story.

What was very different in this play were the body movements and facial expressions — they had a distinct European flavour to it, which one is used to seeing in traditional British movies or serials. And there was more physical presence that could be felt from people climbing on others to more direct expressions like actually giving a slap or kicking a person.

Another aspect which was quite noticeable was the use of sticks and cloth in a more prominent and dynamic way. And the reason behind it was theatre artistes Max Webster from England and Mia Theil Haue from Denmark, who have been conducting a workshop at Gurukul for the last three weeks, and this is the first demonstration that the participants staged.

They were supported by Danish Center of Culture and Development have

Talking about their workshop Webster said, “We have given a lot of physical training, a series of exercises by which artistes can use their body in an imaginative way.”

Haue added, “We teach artistes to have a presence on stage. Just by stepping on stage, they should have a level of expression. It should start from the body and then move on to context and story.”

Sharing their experience of working with Nepali theatre artistes who are not used to such types of body movements she said, “It did have fantastic advantages as Nepali theatre has a lot of dances. It is quite dynamic and has a life to it. But since dance is not theatre, we changed it into physical action which has a meaning and becomes a part of the play.”

As for this particular play being chosen Webster said, “It is a play written almost 50 years ago about German revolution but since it is very relevant to Nepal, we decided to do it. But it’s not a direct commentary about the situation here.”

Both of them will be conducting workshops in Dhading with VSO and Banepa with SPW in

January.