The company's innovations are too numerous to adequately mention. The most striking was the use of towering, Daliesque scarecrow figures of different metallic colors to represent the cold insensitivity of the royal family and the Ironshirts. The corresponding actors set themselves in changing physical relationships with these horrifying puppets, wheeling them around the circle or chaining themselves to the giant torsos. A bizarre raggedy-Ann doll represented Michael, the infant heir, emphasizing his impotence in the face of the cross-currents of intrigue.

The sincere dedication of the Caravan players to their material, their personalization of the social suffering that is the meat of their plays, makes them "radical" in the noblest sense of the word. If they do nothing with their time but prepare their shows, they can rightfully be called political people. They could not achieve the mixture of polished artistry and spontaneous expression that they do without passionately believing in their work.

At the end of the Chalk Circle performance, the company approaches the surrounding audience and, with different cadences, speak personal versions of Brecht's closing lines:

... That what there is shall go to those who are good for it,

Thus: the children to the motherly, that they prosper;

The carts to the good drivers, that they are well driven; And the valley to the waterers, that it bring forth fruit.

Maggie Helmer stood before me and substituted her own thought for the very last line: "And Vietnam to the Vietnamese people, to do with as they will." And somehow that tired slogan has never had more meaning for me.