Taught as a staple of English classes in the 11th grade, The Crucible was finally brought to life by the drama department this year.
In the beginning of the year, theater teacher Bernie DeLeo offered the English department a chance to see any of the literature they taught up on stage.
After much deliberation, the English 11 teachers decided on Arthur Miller’s play.
“We as a team approached him and said every year we teach The Crucible, and he got very excited. He has actually come to our classes in the past and talked about Arthur Miller, and talked about The Crucible in drama,” said AP English Language teacher Jamie O’Neill.
Four scenes were taken from the play to be performed by the Theater 3 and 4 classes during Spartan time last month. Due to the 30 minute time constraints, the lengthy play was carefully picked for the most interesting scenes that also worked to establish setting and character relationships. Focusing on the hysteria surrounding witches in the Puritan community, The Crucible is four acts and about two hours long when performed from start to finish.
“They said we could only go up to Act III because otherwise we would spoil the whole play, and so we tried to pick the most climactic ones with enough background information,” said junior Elise Roberts, who played Abigail Williams in The Crucible.
“We started with a, like, exposition of who I was and who Tituba was, and we got a background of Elizabeth and John, onto the best scene in the whole play, which is the trial.”
The play, which is set in the 1600s during the Salem Witch Trials, took the cast approximately six weeks to prepare for. They struggled with memorizing their lines and getting into their characters, who were hard to relate to due to the 400 years of changing culture.
“The most difficult thing that we actually had trouble with until the very last second was lines that people wouldn’t get down. People wouldn’t get down to study the lines because other things are going on,” said senior Scott Burrows, who played the male lead, John Proctor. “We dropped lines a lot and it took people a while to get there, but we got there eventually, and we’re pretty happy with that.”
As the first opportunity to combine literature with drama, the English 11 teachers were thrilled to see the play up on stage. Despite the early struggles of the cast, the English department could not have been happier about the final product.
“This whole idea of having it on stage was something that we could not be more excited about because really, plays are meant to be seen on stage, and we never really had access to that before. They’ll hear it, they’ll see a movie version, but to see it physically on stage was just something that we normally have not been able to expose our students to,” said O’Neill.
This is the first year that The Crucible has been performed as a play for the students, who normally receive a copy of the play, listen to audio versions, or watch the school-approved movie. Reading the play and seeing it performed are two different things, and the drama department was determined to make the distinction clear.
“We wanted to give The Crucible a different meaning because you’re not supposed to just read a play. That’s not how plays work. You’re supposed to sit there and experience it, so we wanted it to be better than just popcorn reading it in class with monotone people and no acting,” said Roberts. “We wanted the emotions to actually come through.”