The Crucible

The first effort of the Divinity Players was a production of Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible, concerning the Salem, Massachusetts witch trials in 1692. It was meant as a parable of the McCarthy hearings in the early 1950s. The production was on 30-31 January and 1-2 February 1997.

Produced by special arrangement with Dramatists Play Service, Inc.

Cast (in order of appearance)

(Pictures are about 25 kbytes in size.)

Salem Village, spring, 1692

Technical Artists

Small Pictures of Personnel | Cast Picture (46 kbytes) | Download Cast Picture (46 kbytes)

Director's Note

The dictionary defines a crucible as "a basin in which elements are subjected to high heat for the purpose of examination." Its derivative meaning is "a severe, intense test." In this production, the audience will be the walls of that basin, both forming the sides of the crucible and examining the elements gathered in the center.

From its opening night in 1953, 'The Crucible" has been dismissed by its critics as melodrama, and its seventeenth century setting just a screen on which Mr. Miller could project his concerns about the McCarthy hearings. In the rehearsal process, the actors and I became part of the crucible ourselves, and discovered something much richer and more complex than melodrama. We found textured characters with whom we could identify, whose actions and reactions paralleled our own. Governor Danforth is not the personification of evil; he brings what he truly believes to be justice to this terrible crisis. John Proctor is no romantic hero; he is an ordinary man who finally finds his own moral center.

The Salem witch trials took place in a society even more contentious and conflicted than our own. Their theology cast everything in the light of the cosmic battle between God and Satan and made even the most ordinary encounters fraught with ultimate significance. That intense cosmology and the intimacy of their village life make heat enough to melt down and refine these very human men and women

What is 'The Crucible' about? It is surely about mob hysteria and the terrible cost of standing firm against madness. It is about sin, repentance and forgiveness. It is about John and Elizabeth Proctor's tragic marriage, the destruction of John Hale's faith and the awful power of a theocracy. All of this will burn before you tonight.

It has been a great privilege to work with this many thoughtful, intelligent and committed actors and technical artists. I give them heartfelt thanks for bringing this great play to life. We offer it to you now-all of the elements of character, action, speech and stagecraft for your examination and conclusions-as we place them here before you in the crucible.

The Reverend Claire Fischer-Davies

Background for The Crucible

Arthur Miller

• Arthur Miller (1915-)
• The Portable Arthur Miller, Ed. by Christopher Bigsby, pp. 153-258, Penguin Books, 1995.

Other Productions of The Crucible

• The Movie
  • The Crucible Screenplay, Arthur Miller, Penguin Books, NY, 1996.
  • The Crucible, 20th Century Fox (Pictures of the cast and movie scenes.)
  • Other reviews of The Crucible movie
  • Movie location (Hog Island MA)

Puritanism

• American Sense of Puritan
• Pilgrims and Puritans

Salem, Massachusetts and Its "Witches"

• Witchcraft at Salem, Chadwick Hansen, George Braziller Co., NY, 1969
• The Salem Witchcraft Papers: Verbatim Transcripts of the Legal Documents of the Salem Witchcraft Outbreak of 1692, Vols. I-III, Archie N. Frost, Da Capo Press, NY, 1977
• The Salem Witch Trials 1692 (A chronology of events)
• The Witches at Salem 1692 (Statistics about the witch trials)

Ergotism's Role in the Salem Witch Trials

• "Ergotism: The Satan Loosed in Salem?", Linnda R. Caporael, Science, Vol. 192, 2 April 1976, pp. 21-26

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Web page creator: L. David Roper (e-mail)