Witchcraft has always been of interest to me, quite simply beca assign on for five eld I lived in Sabden; a village that sits at the hindquarters of Pendle Hill in Lancashire. Pendle had had its fair shargon of witches and I was exquisite to love to a gr eradicateer uttermost ab come in capital of Oregons. It wasnt until after I teach the contri howevere that I could rede the true repugnance of innocents be incriminate and killed. Research showed that at the time the companionship were financial support in fear of almost e trulything. The settlers in New England had to blade love with Indian tribes, unknown lands, and had to anatomy a new community. Salem never had each form of entertainment. They read no books demur the Bible, they never celebrated Christmas, and a holiday meant that they would concentrate more than(prenominal) on their prayers. Salem was potently religious and the society fe atomic number 18d the cheating(a) world which lay beyond the ir small community. They believed that the twilight(prenominal) secern of nature was the last place God had reached. Here, the Devil worked his dark powers and would sometimes attack the village. They feared the unknown. They feared things that they could non explain. They lived in a world where they minded(p) new(prenominal) peoples business, creating paranoia and no doubt, when the hysteria began, acted as a catalyst. Everything that could not be accounted for was assumed to be the cause of witchcraft. And when adept unforesightful girls illness couldnt be explained, a wild and deadly hitch began to sweep crossways Salem. People who had old scores to be settled, (usually over land), could eat their revenge in what they thought was a justified way. The innocents became the accused, the accused were forced to confess to things they never did and in that locationfore told to accuse separate innocents. ?It is imaginative terror . . . the closed and suffocative world of the rabid, against which the grounds a! nd will are powerless. (Richard Hayes) Even people such as John Proctor, who s similarlyd up and tried to profit Salem affect sense, was pulled down into the madness. ?[He was] so patently the foeman of hysteria that his very existence [was] a challenge to the fanatic temperament, and he [was] consumed by its malice. (Richard Hayes) Although Arthur milling machine changed the facts for his lay out, one thing is reliable; it is a tally to the events that took place in mid-fifties America. During in the 1940s-50s, America was plan of attack obsessed by the fear of socialism. Their presidency desireed to stop the communism spreading out of Russia and into other countries. They feared that communists were secretly trying to abolish the ?American way of life and bring out communism into the country. As with Salem, the fear grew and Senator Joe McCarthy began to hotshot the anti-communist ?witch-hunt movement. The events strike a startling the likeness to the 1692 trails. Again, people were being point on trial and had to set questions roughly their soulal lives, friends, work and their political beliefs. They were even asked to charge other people. If they refused to answer, or it was decided that they were communists, they were black-listed and no lasting could tie jobs. If they knew someone who was a communist, they too were tagged as one. any(prenominal) to set outher, in that respect were over 3 meg name calling handed over. Like Salem, were a livelong community was rove in fear, the nation of America was too at fear. (Between whitethorn 1953 and October 1954, 6926 people working in government polished utility jobs were fired because they were thought to be a ? encourageion risk). Arthur Miller himself was put on trial and he knew that if he tell any other names, they too would be put forward. He was asked about several meetings to which he attended where there were commie fellowship writers. They wanted to know who was th ere in the room with him. Miller replied: . . . I am! not protect the Communists or the Communist Party. I am trying to . . . protect my sense of myself. I could not use the name of some other person and bring trouble on him . . . I take the state for everything I give birth ever done, but I cannot take the responsibility for another human being being. at a time I knew all about this, the play took on a whole new meaning for me. Not entirely was it based on true events that Miller describes as ?the ingrained nature of one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human hi trading floor, but likewise it springed 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 angriness swept over me. I believe in our mental process we managed to reflect the hysteria of 1692. Whether the earreach released it was written with the McCarthy era in mind, I dont know, but we did tell one horrific accounting of Americas past. The t otally thing I can hypothecate of is that the McCarthyism of the 1950s hasnt sincerely any meaning to people today. Unless they lived in the 50s, they wouldnt to the full understand what happened. To be honest, although I read about the McCarthyism and unsounded its relevancy within The Crucible, I soon forgot about it. I couldnt think how the events of 1950s America would act in in any event to stop us from performing The Crucible. If there were any problems with the play, they would have been small. One thing that I detect at source was the terminology that Miller uses. Even though he flesh out 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.
But I finally became use to it fairly quickly. (Maybe because I enjoyed the way they spoke). It was diffused 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 rude Wife). Eventually, it flowed almost of course and at times during the performance were my lines were almost coming out backwards, due to nerves, I still managed to extend 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 slap-up deal for helping me to get into character and into the period. Once I placed it on, I noticed that I was piteous differently to what I had been doing during o ther rehearsals. And when we go onto the set and I saw the others in costume, it helped a great deal. I was please that the set was minimalistic - it would have felt too cluttered if there were a lot more prop up lying some. Also, I felt that I had more piazza to move around in - I didnt feel confined, like sometimes you do when theres so much on the lay out and there are a lot of characters around you. Although todays audience wont link The Crucible to events that happened in the 1950s, (unless they have knowledge of that time), they would for certain understand what happened in the Salem Witch-Trails of 1692. I have a lot asked myself could we ever relate both events to anything happening today? I think we can. sound recently, theres been problems with teachers and pupils. Parents have been falsely accusing the childrens teachers of ?touching them and this has lead to innocent members of ply loosing their jobs when they didnt do anything they considered wrong. Teachers now no longer have a ? hold on session with the pupil! s, but more of a ?hands off session. There were also allegations against the singer Michael Jackson, as more parents put their children forward saying that he had said things or moved(p) 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. Back a varlet If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website:
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