(Robert Hurwitt's article appeared 2/14 in the San Francisco Chronicle.)

John Doyle directs 'Chalk Circle' at ACT

"I think my natural style of storytelling is to ask the audience to imagine, to truly suspend disbelief," John Doyle says, sitting in a rehearsal room at American Conservatory Theater. "Women don't normally walk through the streets playing tubas. Mad boys don't play the violin beautifully, not necessarily. So when I use that, you are going to a place where you know you're not just watching a story. You're watching the telling of the story at the same time. I'm drawn to that process. I've always liked that, well before I knew it was Brechtian."

Many theatergoers will recognize the tuba and violin as references to Doyle's riveting stripped-down staging of Stephen Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd," in which a small ensemble of actors doubled as the orchestra – playing not only all the characters but all the instruments as well.

Made his name

The English Broadway import, which he restaged at American Conservatory Theater, made his name in this country. He's followed it with a similarly staged "Company" on Broadway, as well as "Peter Grimes" for the Metropolitan Opera and Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's "Mahagonny" with Los Angeles Opera, among other projects. He's back at ACT to direct "The Caucasian Chalk Circle" – Brecht's great political morality play in which Grusha, a servant, saves an abandoned baby during a war and later stands trial for stealing the child – in a new translation by Domenique Lozano.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/12/PKJ81BR82D.DTL&type=performance#ixzz0gDPNeP0T

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