ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an alternative interpretation that demonstrates why Bertolt Brecht regarded his political performance strategies as embedded in the text—an opinion he expressed in rehearsals when everything seemed to be running of its own accord, leading him to exclaim that the only possible way of staging it was implicit in the play. That Brecht regarded the production as an exemplary experiment is evident from the fact that he commissioned Hans Bunge, and many other directorial assistants, to create a Modellbuch. There are a number of ways of getting to know the Chalk Circle model. A model of dialectical art, the 1954 staging presented Brecht's preferred model of economic production. The way the Singer and his team carried out their storytelling—laying bare the social significance of its events and the social attitudes and interpretive approach of their participants—in many ways echoed Brecht's work during rehearsals.
