The sentence is from "Studio Theatre’s ‘John Proctor Is the Villain’ rethinks ‘The Crucible’/A new play imagines contemporary high school students considering the classic work through the lens of the #MeToo movement" (in The Washington Post).
Here's your final clue:
CORRECTION
An earlier version of this story misquoted playwright Kimberly Belflower. Recounting a conversation she had with her father about “The Crucible,” Belflower recalled that it was she, not he, who said that “John Proctor is the villain.” The article has been corrected.
I have an idea for a play about a woman whose desire for credit is her downfall. A theater critic in a big newspaper makes much of her new play because he loves what he sees as a charming scene in which the father — a beef farmer — says the line that has become the title of her play....
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16 comments:
O goody. Another chance for deep thinkers to misconflate McCarthy (Republican, legitimate) with HCUA (Democrat, repugnant illegitimate and un-American in the extreme)
Let's see how long it takes before someone mentions Mccarty's Hollywood blacklist.
John LGKTQ Henry
I’m stumped.
Wrong. Goody Proctor is the villain. Their quiet puritanical utopia of Salem would've never been thrown into chaos had she not had a problem with John getting some strange.
So there.
My father is a man who raises straw-fed beef, so naturally he was thrilled when I told him about my idea for play.
Shouldn't the play be titled: BEEF IS THE VILLAIN! ONLY VEGANS ARE HUMAN!!!
Not the villain. Not when people hanging and crushing others to death. But Proctor (or Miller) had a way of excusing his own faults and blaming women for his misdeeds. His wife is "cold." Abbie Putnam led him astray. He's a virtuous, upright man in spite of that.
Miller had a way of separating himself from the relationships he had with those around him. That may or may not be strange in a socialist. He's the righteous, rational individualistic hero, not somebody caught up with others in the messiness of life. Or if he is caught up in it, he somehow stands apart from or above it.
Miller's plays are all about guilt and judgment, often about betraying and being betrayed, but I get the feeling that somehow he wants to absolve himself and his protagonists. Maybe he had to proclaim his own decency in order not to be consumed by guilt.
There are many ways to adapt an old play for a new era. You can restage Shakespeare’s “Richard III,” for example, in Mussolini’s Rome or Nixon’s Washington. You can rewrite an 18th-century script in modern dialogue, as Theater J recently did with “Nathan the Wise.” Or you can do what Kimberly Belflower is doing with the professional premiere of her play, “John Proctor Is the Villain,”...
Because that's sooooo much easier than coming up with something on your own!
Less risky, too.
If she thinks that John Proctor is the villain because he cheated on his wife with a young, powerless woman, then I'm very curious what she thinks of Bill Clinton's behavior in the oval office.
Also, the idea that a teenager in the 1600's is a stand in for a teenager in modern times is not quite right.
I'm going to go see Lucia di Lammermoor at the Met soon. They have set it in a modern city.
Sigh. When I saw Madame Butterfly, it was with a sparse set of geometric figures.
Can't folks just see the traditional time and place setting versions? Yes, I know that was inspired me to go Lucia di Lammermoor in the first place is The Fifth Element, and who knows, maybe they will one day do a version with a blue alien diva, but I would have like to see the classic.
Apparently, it's White Male privilege. Still, the White Male judges would be more to blame.
Postmodernism assumes that everything original has already been said. If you can't give it a new racial or gender or LGBTQ twist, it's back to the classics for something to reboot.
Using The Crucible as a way to critique the #metoo movement would be truly courageous and provocative if it were done by a skillful playwright. But, I suspect the "retelling" will simply suggest that the witch hunters were right all along.🙄
It's like the idea behind "Wicked." Take a well-known piece of art and flip it so the hero is the villain or the villain is the hero.
I think it's fine to use a famous work of literature and do something else with it. I think of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," which plays off "Hamlet." You just have to do it well!
David Mamet does a hero/villain flip within one play, "Oleanna."
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I'm a little skeptical of a play that has a classroom with a teacher and students with all the lines assigned. The students confront the teacher... then what? It can't just be they have a stimulating discussion of the play!
"My father is a farmer who raises grass-fed beef . . ."
Not a common rancher, mind you, but one who raises "grass-fed" beef. Probably organic, non-GMO, too. Woke beef, I'd guess. Sold at Whole Foods.
It's not exactly (!) on topic, but I gotta say, all this food-related virtue-signaling is gonna get some folks starved to death. Coming close already, in Sri Lanka.
See, Bjorn Lomborg's recent WSJ op-ed, "Ukraine Crisis Reveals the Folly of Organic Farming" (behind pay-wall):
"As food prices skyrocket and the conflict threatens a global food crisis, we need to face another unpopular reality: Organic farming is ineffective, land hungry and very expensive, and it would leave billions hungry if it were embraced world-wide."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-crisis-reveals-the-folly-of-organic-farming-global-hunger-crops-food-prices-energy-11651869179?mod=opinion_lead_pos5
MeToo? That seems really, like, passe. Over. That was six or seven outrage cycles ago. Hula hoops. 23-skidoo.
I played John Proctor in a high school production of "The Crucible." I tried to add some nuance to the performance and give some sense of what he was thinking -- but the director and other cast members found that to be bad acting, and demanded that I play it as a classic "villain" role and basically yell at everybody.
There’s a lot of great art lost to us as the language and styles shift. Three penny Opera was based on an eighteenth century play that only the most determined modern reader could get through.
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