The Crucible is arguably one of the crowning glories of 20th Century theatre, a play so powerful that the parallels it drew on one of the sickening acts in American history, the show trials conducted by Senator McCarthy in an attempt to goad the decent people of the country in to believing that everyone, neighbour, friend, lover was part of a Communist conspiracy, was too big to ignore. Bringing together the fear and jealousy of one era, a harsh time dominated by religion and comparing the post Second World War American dogma was a piece of genius that only Arthur Miller could have done and written so incredibly well.
Tell Tale Theatre, a company that is only three years old has already had deserved success with their adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 and recently reached Sky Arts’ Nation’s Best Am Dram Competition. Mentored by television’s Martin Shaw, famous for his parts in programmes such as The Professionals, Judge John Deed and more recently as the superb George Gently, the company have come a long way in a short time. Now the company is to take on their most ambitious performance yet as they look into the controversy that surrounded The Salem Witch Trials in the 17th Century and the fear, hatred and chilling equivalent nearly 300 years later.
Before Tell Tale go into the final production stage and the hard work that comes with putting on a piece of theatre I was able to catch up with two of the actors who have given up their time rehearsing to be able to talk about the play. Sally Fildes-Moss and Halifax born Paula Stewart who portray two very complex characters, two women with very different parts to play in the history of Salem. In amongst the talk of people’s weekends and the music I asked the two actors:
How are excited are you about putting on Arthur Miller’s The Crucible on?
Sally: “We are very excited about doing this play because partly because Arthur Miller is a scripted production and also because this particular play has a lot of relevance even now. It deals with issues of power and abuse of said power and trials in the court of public opinion and scapegoating and the social and political situation at the moment. We are also excited because as an ensemble theatre group that likes to produce immersive productions its interesting for us to take on this rich play and put our own slant on it and use multi-media music and so on to turn it into something vibrant as well as using the genius of Arthur Miller’s script.”
Paula: “I feel really excited it by it because of the multi-media aspects of it and what we like to call the Tell Tale stamp – taking a piece of work and adding our own style and with Tell Tale that’s quite unique, we use multi-media and music in this performance, incredible actors, how some of them are not professional is quite beyond me and just bringing all these different mediums together and delivering in one auditorium accessible to as many people as possible and to be entertaining. I’m also really nervous about it as I’m just scared I won’t do the character justice but I’m nervous about this but I’m going to give it my best.”
This play seems a slight departure from your last production of 1984; both plays though are still relevant in the way that they treat the public with the ability to spread rumour and persecute people.
Sally: “Obviously I wasn’t in 1984 but I read the book and I heard good things about the Tell Tale production so perhaps Paula would like to say a few words as she was in that show?”
Paula: “We devised the 1984 play around the book and we scripted it ourselves and obviously we stayed true to the storyline but we used our own words and very much devised the set around our location which was the Kazimer. As it was a night club venue it was quite interesting holding the performances in there so a lot of the devising of the play was not just around the characters in the play but the space it was being held in because it made it a lot more interactive with the audience and also because the venue is quite an uncomfortable place to sit for two and a half hours it added to the play. The audience felt they were in an uncomfortable place which is what 1984 is and it is relevant to The Crucible because again it’s uncomfortable times just like now, times are difficult, austerity is hard, the recession is crippling a lot of us and basically politics today is mainly based around fear as is the media and that’s certainly what Miller was writing about when he wrote The Crucible.”
Sally: “I just wanted to add there that at the time of the Salem Witch Trials, it was a time when people had been living for a few decades in really harsh settler conditions in an oppressive society which was their way of dealing with the harsh oppressive material conditions and it’s fair to say that the Witch Trials erupted at the point that it reached a height for certain characters were starting to kick back against it so certain conflicts arose and so it was about issues of extreme religion and repression but also about the insecurities that people were feeling about their material situations. It was said there were accusations of witchcraft on the basis of the desire to grab land from neighbours and there were all these dynamics contributing to the fallout.”
The staging is obviously different for The Static Gallery, how do you feel that it’s worked for you?
Paula: “It’s interesting as we’re using thrust staging in that we’ll have audiences on three sides of us, which will be really great as we’ll be close to the audience and they’ll get to see the action from all sides rather than just facing something almost on a 2D level rather than a 3D level. It’s really exciting but as an actress on stage it’s rather nerve wracking, you’ve got nowhere to hide at all but also that it helps the play as it was a society that was being watched, that you were being watched all the time and that you were judged all the time on your actions, which is exactly what we’ll be judged on stage by so I hope it will help the play.”
It’s a play that’s very much based on fear, ignorance and jealousy and it has got this rippling effect – post war Communism and the McCarthy era it has this resonance today, everyone is afraid to speak out.
Paula: “I just feel that we live today in a society of fear with the media and fear amongst the poor and the Salem Witch Trials very much looked at officials in power and the ordinary people not having positions of power and being disadvantaged in not having money or knowledge and some were not as educated as others and that’s happening and is very prevalent and we can see that in society every day, which is scary.”
Sally: “As we are a community theatre group, the situation for us is that we are in a different place each time usually and we’ve talked about how it’s going to be a new venue but we’ve not been into the venue as yet! So until production week we can imagine it but we won’t see it until it’s all been put together in a few days’ time. So it’s our challenge to be adaptable around that as Paula said, our first venue was the Kazimer, our second venue was based around the characters in Trainspotting and that was at The Picket as we were primarily adapting it from music, we had several crew members hanging blackout curtains up ladders and then we had to borrow a cherry-picker crane from a local company to finish the job so that we could have proper blackout for our production. I don’t think we’re going to have that trouble in the Static Gallery in adapting it to our needs to but it’s the fun and games of being in a community theatre group really but we are looking forward to making what we can of venue and they’ve been very helpful and accommodating to us.”
How do you view some of the characters within the play?
Paula: “We spoke a bit about characters and how John Proctor is one of the most finest characters in literature because he is such a juxtaposition of a person, one side of him has done something terrible but then the other side of him is a genuine and heartfelt person and very careful and loving. Not only that though, he’s very majestic in his manner and he takes a considered approach to things and he’s willing to give up his life for the truth, which is really quite an outstanding concept in today’s world and that’s why I’m quite nervous, which I alluded to earlier, about playing the part of Rebecca Nurse because she’s almost too perfect and she was such an outstanding woman, a woman in that day and age was so pure and to have so much inner confidence and also to support her community in following the truth rather than following mass hysteria.”
Sally: “Of course, my character Mrs. Ann Putnam is not nearly as fond of Rebecca Nurse as most people are; I’m looking forward to the challenge of getting my teeth trying to represent Mrs. Putnam well enough. You were saying before about society, John Proctor made his mistakes and for a supposed Christian society, it’s surprising that they weren’t hot on Christian forgiveness, so it’s definitely a society with differing interpretations of what it means to love thy neighbour or judge thy neighbour. Talking about the timeliness and relevance of the piece, we didn’t want to give too much away about the play, we’ve not set it contemporaneously to the Salem Witch Trials so people should come along to find out more about what era we’ve chosen to set the play in and how we’ve chosen to update it and make it relevant to the present time.”
The Crucible is to be performed at the Static Gallery on Roscoe Lane from April 10th till April 13th with a matinee available on the 13th April. Tickets for this show are available from http://www.seetickets.com/tour/tell-tale-theatre.
Ian D. Hall