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Wednesday 10 April 2013

The Cruicible

Witchcraft has al elbow rooms been of interest to me, quite simply beca part for five historic period I lived in Sabden; a village that sits at the back end of Pendle Hill in Lancashire. Pendle had had its fair share of witches and I was knowing to know more ab emerge Salems. It wasnt until afterwards I enter the contribute that I could generalize the legitimate horror of innocents beingness accused and killed. Research showed that at the term the people were living in alarm of almost constantlyyaffair. The settlers in New England had to cope with Indian tribes, unknown lands, and had to build a new community.

Salem never had any form of entertainment. They read no books except the Bible, they never celebrated Christmas, and a vacation meant that they would concentrate more on their prayers. Salem was strongly ghostlike and the society feared the step to the foreside world which lay beyond their nice community. They believed that the dark wilderness was the last place God had reached. Here, the fray worked his dark powers and would some(prenominal)times attack the village. They feared the unknown. They feared things that they could not explain. They lived in a world where they minded otherwise peoples business, creating paranoia and no doubt, when the furiousness began, acted as a catalyst.

Everything that could not be accounted for was fictitious to be the cause of witchcraft. And when one little girls illness couldnt be explained, a wild and mortal(a) finger began to sweep across Salem. People who had old scads to be settled, (usu onlyy everywhere land), could take their revenge in what they intellection was a justified way. The innocents became the accused, the accused were forced to confess to things they never did and then told to accuse other innocents. It is imaginative terror . . . the closed in(p) and suffocating world of the fanatic, against which the intellect and will are powerless. (Richard Hayes) veritable(a) people such as John Proctor, who stood up and attempt to reconstruct Salem reveal sense, was pulled down into the madness. [He was] so manifestly the enemy of hysteria that his very existence [was] a gainsay to the fanatic temperament, and he [was] consumed by its malice. (Richard Hayes) Although Arthur Miller changed the facts for his runaway, one thing is certain; it is a parallel to the events that took place in mid-fifties the States. During in the 1940s-50s, America was coming obsessed by the fear of communism. Their government cute to anticipate the communism sp interpretation out of Russia and into other countries. They feared that communists were secretly trying to destroy the Ameri send away way of life and introduce communism into the country. As with Salem, the fear grew and Senator Joe McCarthy began to unravel the anti-communist witch-hunt movement.

The events strike a startling resemblance to the 1692 trails. Again, people were being put on trial and had to answer questions about their private lives, friends, work and their political beliefs. They were even asked to name other people. If they refused to answer, or it was decided that they were communists, they were black-listed and no longer could read jobs. If they knew someone who was a communist, they too were labelled as one. All together, in that respect were over 3 million names handed over. Like Salem, were a whole community was put in fear, the nation of America was too at fear. (Between May 1953 and October 1954, 6926 people working in government civil service jobs were fired because they were thought to be a security risk).

Arthur Miller himself was put on trial and he knew that if he verbalize any other names, they too would be put forward. He was asked about several(prenominal) meetings to which he attended where there were Communist Party writers. They wanted to know who was there in the room with him. Miller replied: . . . I am not protecting the Communists or the Communist Party. I am trying to . . . protect my sense of myself. I could not use the name of other person and bring interrupt on him . . . I take the responsibility for everything I put one across ever beare, but I foundationnot take the responsibility for another human being. once I knew all about this, the melt took on a whole new substance for me. non only was it based on true events that Miller describes as the essential nature of one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human hi invoice, but also it reflected similar events in our recent past. The Crucible suddenly became a much deeper play when I read it again, and after I put the play down, a sense of sadness and anger swept over me.

I believe in our performance we managed to reflect the hysteria of 1692. Whether the audience released it was written with the McCarthy era in mind, I dont know, but we did tell one horrendous story of Americas past. The only thing I can hold of is that the McCarthyism of the 1950s hasnt really any meaning to people today. Unless they lived in the 50s, they wouldnt fully understand what happened. To be honest, although I read about the McCarthyism and understood its relevance at heart The Crucible, I soon forgot about it. I couldnt see how the events of 1950s America would act in anyway to stop us from performing The Crucible.

If there were any problems with the play, they would have been small. adept thing that I noticed at first was the address that Miller uses. Even though he elaborated some of the grammatical forms, (inparticular, double negatives), the language stuck close to that of the time. When I was reading it aloud at first, I was stumbling all over the place. Sentences werent making any sense.

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But I finally became use to it fairly quickly. (Maybe because I enjoyed the way they stave). It was easy to follow and I found it easier to improvise with the language more than I could when I was performing with the language of the Restoration period. (The Country Wife). Eventually, it flowed almost course and at times during the performance were my lines were almost coming out backwards, due to nerves, I still managed to keep going and make sense using the language. I know that some others in the group had changed their lines so that they could remember them, but from the start I tried to keep to what Arthur Miller had written.

I found that the costumes helped a great deal for helping me to get into character and into the period. Once I placed it on, I noticed that I was contemptible differently to what I had been doing during other rehearsals. And when we moved onto the set and I saw the others in costume, it helped a great deal. I was cheery that the set was minimalistic - it would have felt too cluttered if there were a lot more props lying some. Also, I felt that I had more space to move or so in - I didnt feel confined, like sometimes you do when theres so much on the stage and there are a lot of characters around you.

Although todays audience wont stir The Crucible to events that happened in the 1950s, (unless they have knowledge of that time), they would surely understand what happened in the Salem Witch-Trails of 1692. I have often asked myself could we ever relate both events to anything happening today? I think we can. Just recently, theres been problems with teachers and pupils. Parents have been falsely criminate the childrens teachers of touching them and this has lead to innocent members of staff loosing their jobs when they didnt do anything they considered wrong. Teachers now no longer have a hands on session with the pupils, but more of a hands off session.

There were also allegations against the singer Michael Jackson, as many parents put their children forward saying that he had said things or touched them in sexual ways. When one started, they all started. (Personally, I think the parents were doing it for the money). The same would apply to Bill Clinton. When Monica Lowinsky spoke out, so did many other women who claimed they had slept with the president.

The Crucible tells a horrific story and I feel that we told it well. I hope audiences can learn from what we showed them and that they are weary of it happening again.

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