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Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible,” about the Salem witch trials in the 1690s, is a standard text in many high school English classes. In Maine, it has been adopted as part of the statewide Learning Results, standards that define core elements of education and citizenry. Students typically read the play in their sophomore year.
Teens relate to the rebelliousness and strength of the young women at the heart of the story, said Meredith O’Reilly, who teaches sophomore English at Bangor High School. Teachers like the fine literary quality and Miller’s analysis of the use of fear in politics and social life, she added, pointing out that “The Crucible” also is an allegory about McCarthyism, the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the witch-hunt-style hysteria over communism in the 1940s and 1950s.
“But it’s relevant now because it illustrates some of the conflicts that come up when people are afraid. For high school students in a post-Sept. 11 world, that’s important,” said O’Reilly. She has arranged for the 350 sophomores at BHS to attend Penobscot Theatre Company’s performance of “The Crucible,” which previews tonight and opens tomorrow to all audiences at the Bangor Opera House.
Mark Torres, producing artistic director at Penobscot Theatre, said he programmed the play, which debuted in 1953 in New York City and was given a revival in 2002 starring Laura Linney and Liam Neeson, to inspire audience members to think about American society today and its connections to the past. (The New Surry Theatre in Ellsworth also presented the play this summer.)
In recent years, Torres has chosen one production a year as part of Classics in Context, an enrichment program to extend the themes of theater into an everyday arena with the help of partnering organizations. Last year, more than 900 students attended Penobscot’s production of William Gibson’s “The Miracle Worker.” The year before, veterans of World War II attended a special showing of “The Diary of Anne Frank” and participated in a post-show discussion about their memories of the war. Torres said 1,100 students saw “Anne Frank.” He expects 650 for “The Crucible.” Two school matinees were nearly sold out as of last week.
“We hope it sends a message that art and community have a variety of ways to intersect and that seeking broader understanding of the issues, experiences and points of view of characters caught in dramatic conflict can be one of them,” said Torres. “I think if we summed up the aim of Classics in Context, it would be to elicit from our audience an urge to ask themselves: ‘What would I do under those circumstances?’ And from nontheatergoers: a belief that the theater is contributing to the community by fulfilling that facet of our mission which revolves around education and cultural-social exploration.”
This year, Torres asked representatives at the Margaret Chase Smith Library in Skowhegan to provide a mini exhibit for the foyer of the Opera House. Smith, the beloved Maine senator, was one of Joseph McCarthy’s earliest critics and, in 1950, delivered a speech called “Declaration of Conscience” to the Senate. “The United States Senate has long enjoyed the worldwide respect as the greatest deliberative body in the world,” she said. “But recently that deliberative character has too often been debased to the level of a forum of hate and character assassination sheltered by the shield of congressional immunity.”
Reading her ideas triggered Torres’ own sense that, since the events of Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. citizens have experienced considerable confusion over freedom, international respect and the use of fear as a powerful political tool.
“Because of the times we are living in, I wanted to look at these issues,” said Torres. “After 9-11, we began to see a new world order – whether you agree with it or not. It’s an issue of personal freedom versus national security. ‘The Crucible’ definitely has a point of view, and it illuminates through the characters what it would be like if someone knocked on your door looking for answers.”
In addition to visiting the Smith Library, Torres went to Salem to walk the same streets and visit the landscape as Miller writes about in the play. The town itself has become a tourist attraction, he said, but going there was instructive to him in understanding more about the Puritans about whom Miller writes.
Director Tlaloc Rivas, a Philadelphia-based director and actor, also visited Salem. He went, he said, to get “a sense of place.”
“It wasn’t so much to visit the sites of what took place but of being on the outside,” said Rivas. “It’s a beautiful place, but they were at the edge of the world. Salem is such an unforgiving place. I just wanted to take that in. And it was remarkable – that sense of loneliness.”
In his introduction to the 1953 work, Miller writes: “This play is not history in the sense in which the word is used by the academic historian … However, I believe that the reader will discover here the essential nature of one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history. The fate of each character is exactly that of his historical model, and there is no one in the drama who did not play a similar -and in some cases exactly the same – role in history.”
Meredith O’Reilly, the teacher at Bangor High School, expanded on Miller’s thoughts.
“We live in a world where terrorist is a word that carries the same weight as communism did in the 1950s and the Cold War, where the media is saturated with images of death and dying, where there is an unseen force and fear is generated as a result,” she said. “The fact that all of this is perfectly normal now is something I want the students to recognize. Understanding these circumstances will help the students negotiate them.”
Penobscot Theatre Company will present Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” Nov. 4-14 at the Opera House, 131 Main St., Bangor. For tickets, call 942-3333 or go online to www.penobscottheatre.org. Alicia Anstead can be reached at 990-8266 and aanstead@bangordailynews.net.
Arthur Miller’s Classic
What: ?The Crucible?
When: Nov. 4-14
Where: Bangor Opera House, 131 Main St.
How much: $12-$25
Contact: 942-3333 or visit www.penobscottheatre.org
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