Subscribe to the 2026-2027 Season!
Subscribe to the 2026-2027 Season!
4 September - 20 September, 2026
Director: Sara Holdren
With a wicked sense of humor, a huge heart, and an extraordinary new original score by Colin Killalea of Vampire Weekend, this production brings Brecht roaring and rollicking into the present.
Haydn Haring as as Natella Abashwili and others
John Holdren as as the Grand Duke and others
Stephanie Rinaldi as as Adjutant Shalva Tzereteli and others
Alex Griffith as as Simon Shashava
Bella Hersman as as Grusha Vashnadze
Grace Trapnell as as the Cook and others
C. Glen Williams as as Governor Georgi Abashwili and others
Ella Caplin as as Ludovica and others
Mathias Glick as as Puppeteer and others
Ariel Tatum as as the Singer
Andrew Akre as as Azdak and others
Nick Heiderstadt as as Prince Arsen Kazbeki and others
Kyra Gibson as as Puppeteer and others
Gabrielle Laskey as as Shauva and others
Jayda Everett as as First Doctor, First Lawyer, Mother-in-Law and others
Taylor Ballard as as Second Doctor, Second Lawyer, Jussup, and others
Ben Brantley as as Jura the Musician
Debbie Owen - Production Stage Manager
Caroline Abdenour-Brown - Assistant Stage Manager
Miller Murray Susen - Producer
Will Slusher - Scenic Designer
Mix Rudolph - Lighting Designer
Ivy Jean - Assistant Lighting Designer
Theo Teichmann - Sound Designer
Colin Killalea - Composer/Music Director
August Applewhite - Props Team
Daniel Kunkel - Props Team
Talya Vardimon - Props Team
Tricia Emlet - Costume Designer
“In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.”
—Bertolt Brecht
On a quiet Sunday morning, a brutal coup topples a little country in the Caucasus Mountains into chaos. The ruling classes scrap and claw for power as the peasants simply try to survive. In this world on fire, a young servant girl named Grusha finds a baby — the child of the rich governor, abandoned when his mother fled. She makes a choice, and an adventure begins.
Completed in 1945 after the great theater-maker Bertolt Brecht’s escape from Nazi Europe, THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE is part musical, part parable — funny, expansive, lyrical, and humane. It’s a picaresque satire, a courtroom drama, and an exquisite poem for wartime, all rolled into one. Through the tough, good-hearted Grusha and the wily, world-weary rascal-turned-judge, Azdak, the play asks what we owe to each other in times of crisis and whether we can escape our own cynicism to remake a corrupt and broken world.
THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE is both a fable and a musical — a sweeping adventure and a sharp, ribald comedy. Director Sara Holdren envisions its story (in fact a play-within-a-play staged by the members of two collective farms) as a scrappy, muscular, hope-fueled attempt at creating community, choosing care, and pursuing justice in the face of corruption and violence. With a wicked sense of humor, a huge heart, and an extraordinary new original score by Colin Killalea of Vampire Weekend, this production brings Brecht roaring and rollicking into the present.
Sara Holdren is a director, writer, and teacher who was born in Charlottesville, Virginia and raised in the Blue Ridge foothills and, artistically, right here at Live Arts. She is the Pulitzer-nominated theater critic of New York Magazine as well as the winner of the 2016-2017 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. She currently teaches in the directing department at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, and her recent directing work includes Faust (Heartbeat Opera), The Oresteia and Cymbeline (NYU Grad Acting), As You Like It (Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival), Three Sisters and Twelfth Night (Two River Theater), and, with her own theater collective Tiltyard, MIDSUMMER, an original Shakespearean adaptation last performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She has been seeing and making shows at Live Arts since she was very small and has, at various times, acted, designed, directed, season programmed, graphic designed, built sets, hung lights, made lifelong friends, eaten pizza, and performed as an aerialist at the corner of 2nd and Water Street. She is thrilled to return to the Gibson Theater and to build something new with this community that she deeply loves.
The 2026-2027 Live Arts Season is generously sponsored by Ronald Bailey & Pamela Friedman.
