Letting Students Reinterpret “The Crucible”
The 2016 Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible was unconventional for a number of reasons. The director, Ivo van Hove, stripped the American classic about the Salem witch trials down to its most basic elements. The set was minimalistic. The music and lighting were striking. The aesthetic abandoned 17th century Salem in favor of a timeless and placeless classroom.
Most unconventional, though, is that it was the first major production to suggest the witches may actually be real.
It was a radical interpretation of the script, particularly because, to many, it seemed at odds with Miller’s intention behind The Crucible. When it premiered in 1953, The Crucible served as an allegory for the political paranoia of McCarthyism, drawing parallels between the mass hysteria of the Salem witch trials and the anti-communist hearings of the House of Representatives’ Committee on Un-American Activities. In the 1950s, The Crucible served as a warning against mass hysteria, against being manipulated by politicians, against creating enemies out of the wrong people.
So if you suggest that the witches might actually be real, does that mean Abigail’s witch hunt was justified? Does that in turn mean the same for McCarthy?
Of course not, because McCarthy had been dead nearly 60 years when this revival took place. Ivo van Hove, who is Belgian anyway, was making a production for the people of 2016, not 1953, and any purpose the play had back then was irrelevant. What was relevant, to him, was what the script could mean now.
The only reason that such an interpretation was considered so radical, by critics and audiences alike, is because the original purpose behind The Crucible is so well-known — perhaps more so than any other play in history. In fact, I would even argue that at this point, Miller’s intention behind the play is more well-known than the actual plot. In large part, that is because the play has become a staple of the American high school curriculum. The Crucible is taught at thousands of schools across the country every year, and it is always taught alongside its “purpose.”
One such high school is the fictional one in John Proctor is the Villain, a new play by Kimberly Belflower, currently running at Studio Theatre in Washington, DC. The play centers around the students of a Junior honors English class at a rural Appalachia high school in Georgia in 2018. They are in the midst of studying The Crucible — and its “purpose,” of course — when a series of sexual assault allegations rock the school.
Belflower skillfully uses parallels between The Crucible and the events of the play to comment on various aspects of the #MeToo movement, especially the internal dilemma many of the students face as they fully support the movement in theory, but are less sure of themselves when they face situations involving people they know personally.
The Crucible seems at first like an apt comparison, especially since so many of those accused today frame themselves as victims of a “witch hunt.” Interestingly, though — and unlike many other meta high school plays that use a similar format to draw parallels between classics and modern day — the students in this play start to realize the parallels they are seeking in this work don’t align with its widely-accepted interpretation. So they start reinterpreting it for themselves.
In doing so, John Proctor is the Villain ends up speaking to one of the failings of many high school curricula, in that it often doesn’t allow for students to find their own interpretations. This is a particular travesty for dramatic works, since theatre as an art form thrives in reinterpretation, in being able to find fresh meaning in classic works. The teacher in the play falls into the same old trap of insisting upon a singular, accepted interpretation of The Crucible. It isn’t until he is gone that the students begin to see their own situations reflected in a reinterpreted version of the play in which John Proctor, long thought of a great hero, is re-evaluated as a villain. That view may not fit Miller’s original purpose of the play, but it fits their situation.
Just as importantly, then, the play also makes clear the importance of art in helping young people process the world around them, both the good and the bad. As a wave of book banning spreads across the US, the students here serve as a casual reminder that the “inappropriate” topics many people are seeking to shield children from are topics they are already experiencing everyday. As a result, John Proctor is the Villain is a perfect illustration of why young people deserve access to art that can help them process their experiences, and why they deserve to be equipped with the skills to interpret — and reinterpret — that art for themselves.
