Frances' Minutes Eleven members and two associates met in Lori’s home on a beautiful October day. Some of us lunched on the deck, some inside. Joanna rang the president’s bell at 1 PM. Lori gave the treasurer’s report: $313.12
We shared our most recent adventures in reading and viewing.
Barbara saw the revival of Hadestown on Broadway; not recommended. Laura recommends Ragtime, also on Broadway now.
Recommended Books Laura: Endling by Maria Reva, long listed for the Booker Prize. Carol reread, with admiration, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. Joanna liked The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, an epistolary novel too late to be considered for 2024-25’s Letters etc. Connie’s favorites are Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, two Indian emigrants in the US, and Claire Adam’s Love Forms, about a Trinidad-born woman in London, searching a daughter she gave up for adoption.
Christine, on a trip to Colombia, wanted to read a novel by a local. Not easily done, but she found The Bitch by Pilar Quintana. We wondered if the Spanish title was as insulting as the English - was something gained in translation? Christine advised not reading the Novel Prize winner László Krasznahorkai, describing his work as dark and difficult. This is our member who read 1534 pages (Penguin edition) of Clarissa.
On the invasion of Artificial Intelligence, as told by Carol. Her friend’s book was copy edited by someone (most unlikely) or something (almost certainly) totally insensitive to the text’s meaning. Required days of labor by the author & his spouse to correct. Maxwell Perkins luckily isn’t around to witness this fresh horror.
To Joanna’s presentation: The Crucible by Arthur Miller and John Proctor Is the Villain by Kimberly Belflower.
If the measure of a classic is the ability to reveal truth long after its initial appearance, The Crucible is one. It is the most frequently produced of all Arthur Miller’s plays. Many of us were surprised – not Death of a Salesman or All My Sons? We then re-considered, considering how often it is performed in high schools, perhaps because of the quantity of girls’ and women’s roles.
The Crucible is an allegory about the search for communists in entertainment and government by HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) in the early 1950’s, with enthusiastic help from Senator Joe McCarthy. Miller uses the late 17th century Salem witch trials as an analogy. Both events took place during times of political upheavals and social anxiety. Both were about threats from groups whose power, if any, was inflated by hysteria and paranoia.
In The Crucible, a group of girls are glimpsed dancing naked in the woods, with the slave Tituba. Were they casting spells? Or were they under a spell? Salem is riven by the idea that witches are among them, that they are threatened by the Devil and his followers. The girls realize the efficacy of deflecting suspicion of their wild behavior: they have been bewitched. They know who the witches are. They have discovered power and are now using it against those who insulted, demeaned, abused or despised them.
Abigail is among the accusers. She was a servant in the household of John and Elizabeth Proctor. John and Abigail were lovers. He broke off their affair, apologized to his wife, dismissed Abigail. Abigail still wants Proctor; his rejection makes her vengeful. She names him a member of the Devil’s coterie.
John Proctor is brought to trial. Despite his innocence, he is found guilty. He will be hung – unless he admits his guilt and repents. He need only sign his name to a written confession.
He refuses: “Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang. How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name.”
Audiences of the 1950’s heard the echoes of witnesses in front of HUAC who named others who they attested were communists. Many were black listed in Hollywood; they either never worked again, worked under assumed names, or left the US.
Kimberley Belflower heard another story; an unexplored aspect of John Proctor’s act. Was it really heroism? He was going to leave his now reconciled wife Elizabeth a widow. Elizabeth was pregnant with their third child. John Proctor was protecting his name; what would happen to his family?
“We talked a lot in our rehearsal process that multiple things can be true,” Belflower said. “I think John Proctor is a good man and does all of these incredible moral things. But this other thing is also true. He was awful to every woman in the play.”
John Proctor Is the Villain takes place in a high school class in Georgia. Belflower’s play explores the sexual power plays between a charismatic teacher and his student, refracting John Proctor and his young servant Abigail. We read the play’s climax, the confrontation between Carter Smith, the charming, exploitative teacher, and Shelby, the girl he seduced and abandoned.
Belflower said she did not intend to “cancel” Miller’s play, she wanted to extend a conversation about it. She found an unexplored theme in The Crucible; her play is commentary on the tangle of sex and power lying underneath a classic assumed to be only about politics.
We shared our most recent adventures in reading and viewing.
Barbara saw the revival of Hadestown on Broadway; not recommended. Laura recommends Ragtime, also on Broadway now.
Recommended Books Laura: Endling by Maria Reva, long listed for the Booker Prize. Carol reread, with admiration, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. Joanna liked The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, an epistolary novel too late to be considered for 2024-25’s Letters etc. Connie’s favorites are Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, two Indian emigrants in the US, and Claire Adam’s Love Forms, about a Trinidad-born woman in London, searching a daughter she gave up for adoption.
Christine, on a trip to Colombia, wanted to read a novel by a local. Not easily done, but she found The Bitch by Pilar Quintana. We wondered if the Spanish title was as insulting as the English - was something gained in translation? Christine advised not reading the Novel Prize winner László Krasznahorkai, describing his work as dark and difficult. This is our member who read 1534 pages (Penguin edition) of Clarissa.
On the invasion of Artificial Intelligence, as told by Carol. Her friend’s book was copy edited by someone (most unlikely) or something (almost certainly) totally insensitive to the text’s meaning. Required days of labor by the author & his spouse to correct. Maxwell Perkins luckily isn’t around to witness this fresh horror.
To Joanna’s presentation: The Crucible by Arthur Miller and John Proctor Is the Villain by Kimberly Belflower.
If the measure of a classic is the ability to reveal truth long after its initial appearance, The Crucible is one. It is the most frequently produced of all Arthur Miller’s plays. Many of us were surprised – not Death of a Salesman or All My Sons? We then re-considered, considering how often it is performed in high schools, perhaps because of the quantity of girls’ and women’s roles.
The Crucible is an allegory about the search for communists in entertainment and government by HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) in the early 1950’s, with enthusiastic help from Senator Joe McCarthy. Miller uses the late 17th century Salem witch trials as an analogy. Both events took place during times of political upheavals and social anxiety. Both were about threats from groups whose power, if any, was inflated by hysteria and paranoia.
In The Crucible, a group of girls are glimpsed dancing naked in the woods, with the slave Tituba. Were they casting spells? Or were they under a spell? Salem is riven by the idea that witches are among them, that they are threatened by the Devil and his followers. The girls realize the efficacy of deflecting suspicion of their wild behavior: they have been bewitched. They know who the witches are. They have discovered power and are now using it against those who insulted, demeaned, abused or despised them.
Abigail is among the accusers. She was a servant in the household of John and Elizabeth Proctor. John and Abigail were lovers. He broke off their affair, apologized to his wife, dismissed Abigail. Abigail still wants Proctor; his rejection makes her vengeful. She names him a member of the Devil’s coterie.
John Proctor is brought to trial. Despite his innocence, he is found guilty. He will be hung – unless he admits his guilt and repents. He need only sign his name to a written confession.
He refuses: “Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang. How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name.”
Audiences of the 1950’s heard the echoes of witnesses in front of HUAC who named others who they attested were communists. Many were black listed in Hollywood; they either never worked again, worked under assumed names, or left the US.
Kimberley Belflower heard another story; an unexplored aspect of John Proctor’s act. Was it really heroism? He was going to leave his now reconciled wife Elizabeth a widow. Elizabeth was pregnant with their third child. John Proctor was protecting his name; what would happen to his family?
“We talked a lot in our rehearsal process that multiple things can be true,” Belflower said. “I think John Proctor is a good man and does all of these incredible moral things. But this other thing is also true. He was awful to every woman in the play.”
John Proctor Is the Villain takes place in a high school class in Georgia. Belflower’s play explores the sexual power plays between a charismatic teacher and his student, refracting John Proctor and his young servant Abigail. We read the play’s climax, the confrontation between Carter Smith, the charming, exploitative teacher, and Shelby, the girl he seduced and abandoned.
Belflower said she did not intend to “cancel” Miller’s play, she wanted to extend a conversation about it. She found an unexplored theme in The Crucible; her play is commentary on the tangle of sex and power lying underneath a classic assumed to be only about politics.
Respectfully submitted,
Frances Greenberg
