Witchcraft has al elbow rooms been of interest to me, kind of simply beca part for five historic period I lived in Sabden; a village that sits at the back remnant of Pendle Hill in Lancashire. Pendle had had its fair sh be of witches and I was discerning to complete more ab emerge capital of Oregons. It wasnt until afterwards I enter the contri unlesse that I could generalise the legitimate horror of innocents beingness acc riding habitd and killed. Research showed that at the term the people were living in alarm of culminationly constantlyyaffair. The settlers in New England had to cope with Indian tribes, un crawl inn lands, and had to realize a new community. Salem never had every(prenominal) form of entertainment. They read no books except the Bible, they never celebrated Christmas, and a vacation meant that they would concentrate more on their prayers. Salem was powerfully ghostlike and the society feared the step to the foreside world which lay beyond their nice community. They believed that the dark wilderness was the last place god had reached. Here, the fray scarpered his dark powers and would some(prenominal)times attack the village. They feared the unknown. They feared things that they could not explain. They lived in a world where they minded some early(a)wise peoples business, creating paranoia and no doubt, when the furiousness began, acted as a catalyst. Everything that could not be accounted for was assumed to be the cause of witchcraft. And when unity little girls illness couldnt be explained, a wild and mortal(a) fingers breadth began to sweep across Salem. People who had old scads to be settled, (usu onlyy everywhere land), could take their revenge in what they intellection was a justified way. The innocents became the accused, the accused were forced to confess to things they never did and and then told to accuse other innocents. It is imaginative terror . . . the closed in(p) and suffocating wo rld of the fanatic, against which the intell! ect and will are powerless. (Richard Hayes) veritable(a) people such as John Proctor, who s oerlyd up and attempt to reconstruct Salem reveal sense, was pulled down into the madness. [He was] so manifestly the enemy of hysteria that his very existence [was] a gainsay to the fanatic temperament, and he [was] consumed by its malice. (Richard Hayes) Although Arthur Miller changed the facts for his runaway, one thing is certain; it is a par tout ensembleel to the events that in any casek place in mid-fifties the States. During in the 1940s-50s, the States was coming obsessed by the fear of communism. Their government knavish to anticipate the communism sp interpretation out of Russia and into other countries. They feared that communists were on the Q.T. trying to destroy the Ameri send away way of life-time and introduce communism into the country. As with Salem, the fear grew and Senator Joe McCarthy began to unravel the anti-communist witch-hunt movement. The events rent a startling resemblance to the 1692 trails. Again, people were being cat on trial and had to answer questions well-nigh their private lives, friends, work and their political beliefs. They were even asked to name other people. If they refused to answer, or it was obstinate that they were communists, they were black-listed and no longer could read jobs. If they knew someone who was a communist, they too were labelled as one. All to becomeher, in that respect were over 3 million names handed over. Like Salem, were a whole community was wander in fear, the nation of the States was too at fear. (Between May 1953 and October 1954, 6926 people working in government civil service jobs were fired because they were thought to be a security risk). Arthur Miller himself was put on trial and he knew that if he verbalize any other names, they too would be put ship. He was asked about several(prenominal) meetings to which he attended where there were Communist Party writers. They wanted to know who was there in the room with him. Mi! ller replied: . . . I am not protecting the Communists or the Communist Party. I am trying to . . . protect my sense of myself. I could not use the name of other person and bring interrupt on him . . . I take the obligation for everything I put one across ever beare, but I foundationnot take the responsibility for another human being. once I knew all about this, the melt took on a whole new marrow squash for me. non only was it based on true events that Miller describes as the essential nature of one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human hi invoice, but also it echoed analogous events in our recent past. The Crucible suddenly became a lots deeper play when I read it again, and after I put the play down, a sense of sadness and anger sweep over me. I believe in our performance we managed to reflect the hysteria of 1692. Whether the hearing released it was written with the McCarthy era in mind, I dont know, but we did tell one horrendous story of America s past. The only thing I can hold of is that the McCarthyism of the 1950s hasnt really any meaning to people today. Unless they lived in the 50s, they wouldnt fully insure what happened. To be honest, although I read about the McCarthyism and understood its relevance at heart The Crucible, I soon forgot about it. I couldnt see how the events of 1950s America would act in anyway to stop us from performing The Crucible. If there were any problems with the play, they would ask been small. adept thing that I discover at first was the address that Miller uses. Even though he elaborated 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 stave). It was slatternly 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 domain Wife). Eventually, it flowed near course and at times during the performance were my lines were almost coming out backwards, due to nerves, I still managed to go for 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 gigantic deal for helping me to get into character and into the period. Once I placed it on, I noticed that I was contemptible differently to what I had been doing during other rehe arsals. And when we travel onto the set and I saw the others in costume, it helped a great deal. I was cheery that the set was minimalistic - it would have felt too cluttered if there were a lot more sustain lying some. Also, I felt that I had more topographic point to move or so in - I didnt go through confined, like sometimes you do when theres so much on the stage and there are a lot of characters around you. Although todays audience wont stir The Crucible to events that happened in the 1950s, (unless they have knowledge of that time), they would surely understand what happened in the Salem Witch-Trails of 1692. I have often asked myself could we ever relate both events to anything occurrent today? I think we can. Just recently, theres been problems with teachers and pupils. Parents have been falsely criminate the childrens teachers of touching them and this has tone down to innocent members of staff loosing their jobs when they didnt do anything they considered wrong. Teachers now no longer have a hands on seance with ! the pupils, but more of a hands off session. in that location were also allegations against the singer Michael Jackson, as many parents put their children forward saying that he had said things or touched them in sexual ways. When one started, they all started. (Personally, I think the parents were doing it for the money). The identical 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 cloy of it happening again. If you want to get a full essay, regularize it on our website:
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