Essay Alliance Redhill

I intend to study the Crucible by Arthur Miller. I will be looking at act 3, through the eyes of a director. The character I will mainly be focusing on is Abigail Williams, a late teen who had committed adultery with the well thought of, John Proctor. The play was written in 1952 and was an allegory of the political state of America under the supervision of Senator Joseph McCarthy. The play was set in 1692 in a god-fearing, puritan village that was isolated in the east of Massachusetts.

This play is based upon the Salem witchcraft trials, two centuries before the book was written and therefore the location of the play was thought of to be masking the anti-communist message it was portraying. The basis of the play is of a group of young female teens that had danced in the woods within the hours of darkness. Yet because of the beliefs that these acts were closely related to witchcraft, the readings of the bible would instruct them to hang all those who participated.

Yet to avoid their own prosecution the blame was passed to many innocent people, including a West Indian slave, who because of her color and belief in spells was an easy target and another was the wife of John Proctor. John himself then becomes the main suspicion of practicing witchcraft after the tables are turned once again. He was asked to give names of those he knows of having connections with the devil to save his own life, he refused to answer their questions as did Miller when he was summoned before McCarthy’s ‘House Un-American Activities Committee.

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This was very similar to the condition of America around the early 1950s when the country was in a situation of corruption. Many innocent people had come to a gritty end, after ‘scapegoats’ that were part of McCarthy’s ‘House Un-American Activities Committee’, could prove them guilty on the flimsiest of evidence. Stage Design I have chosen the below layout because I believe it gives the best possible chance for all of the characters to be seen and heard clearly throughout this act. Dramatic Techniques.

As a director, the dramatic techniques of Miller will be incorporated into my play while personal techniques will be added to feed the requirements of a 21st-century audience. Throughout the play, Miller’s techniques seem very precise in the movements and the way characters express themselves. In Act 1, Miller adds instructions about the amount of light pouring through a narrow window. Therefore showing he considered the smallest of techniques to be important. Not only does he describe the objects in the house but also the mention of the clean air gives a more defined feel.

He then follows to describe the positions of the opening characters; Reverend Parris kneels beside the bed, evidently in prayer and his daughter Betty Parris is lying on the bed, inert. Following these directions, right the way through act 1 Miller tries to sum up the feelings about the devil and the contrast between good and evil as he questions whether diabolism is a holy practice. Miller then tells of how we can now consider the devil as a necessary part of a respectable view of cosmology, therefore really establishing the idea of good and bad religion fully into the play.

During act 1, Miller compares the relationship between people and the devil with a professor at his university and the pupils he taught. He then makes a crucial comparison about America around his era. He quotes; “… and in America, any man who is not reactionary in his views is open to the charge of alliance with the Red hell. Political opposition, thereby, is given an inhuman overlay… ” Therefore backing up his theory of McCarthy’s scapegoats and his own personal experiences, they incorporate into the success of this scene.

Once again Miller describes the basic techniques to introduce act 2, he describes the position of the furniture, the date, and he also describes an action of John Proctor to ensure the audience understands he is at home. He directs Proctor to lean his gun against the fire as he swings a pot from underneath. He smells what’s in the pot, and then tastes it. He then adds a pinch of salt and tastes again. We then hear the footsteps of Elizabeth. Other techniques and statements are made throughout the act, but none have the similarity in length as those we see in act 1 that set the scene.