There has been a recent wave of revival and celebration for Arthur Miller's plays, with David Suchet playing in The Price at Wyndham's theatre, and the Young Vic presenting an all-black cast in Death of a Salesman, and now The Yard is staging a female-led production of The Crucible, with John Proctor being played by a woman. This award-winning theatre space, committed to telling contemporary stories in contemporary ways, is now staging its first classic text by a non-living writer.
This prompted many questions. Regarding the female-led cast I immediately asked why? Is there a need for these characters to go through this metamorphosis? Is this casting a comment on gender or female empowerment, and is this the right play to tackle those issues when the themes of the play are male domination, and the people who lose out the most are the innocent women? Why have a woman play the particularly patriarchal role of John Proctor?
Gender swapping of traditional roles has also hit the headlines recently with the central character ‘Bobby’ in Sondheim's Company being changed to a woman: done to make it more relevant to women today. The RSC's new The Taming of the Shrew where the two central characters are played by actors of the opposite gender offers a fresh perspective on its portrayal of hierarchy and power. I was keen to find out about the vision and ideas behind casting a female-led production of The Crucible, and what audiences would gain from this experience.
We are working to show a different side to the crucible by creating a vivid, funny cast of characters.
In rehearsal
Now fully immersed in rehearsals, Assistant Director Charlotte Fraser offered an insight into how the production was developing:
‘We've turned to a play about a small, rural community collapsing in on itself to make sense of modern politics. In the climate of Brexit, Russia, Trump, and fake news, we are interrogating what it is that pushes us to believe in fairy-tale promises and the idea of the enemy. What kind of stories does fear lead to?
The Crucible, The Yard Theatre
‘The production has an exciting, playful approach to the text, and to the stereotypes of Puritan life that we have inherited. We are working to show a different side to The Crucible by creating a vivid, funny cast of characters. It won't have a fully Puritan setting; instead, it will take in influences from 1692, the mid-twentieth century and the modern day.
‘It's a two-thirds female cast, with women playing some of the lead male roles; including John Proctor. Each of the actors are multi-roling which allows us to draw interesting comparisons between different types of character, going beyond their external appearance. The way we build and perform gender hasn't been a huge part of the rehearsal process. By allowing a number of different bodies to co-exist on stage, without trying to change or adapt them, we hope to provoke the audience into thinking more critically about how identity and the body intersect.’
Outreach
I spoke to the local producer of The Yard, Katherine Igoe-Ewer, who offered further insight into the vision of the production and how this could be explored in a schools workshop.
Igoe-Ewer told me that The Yard has dedicated opportunities for the young people in its area as well as growing opportunities for schools. In the past three years, The Yard has worked with young people in schools and the local community looking at new writing and ‘scratching’ new work. The Crucible is the first exploration, though, of a classic play. It's a shift away from traditional practice so this opportunity will offer students a version of a classic that they might not get elsewhere.
The workshops explore the fearfulness and divisions in the world they inhabit digitally. The students question the relevance of those themes, exploring how to subvert this classic text and how to look at and re-evaluate the things that are being communicated.
In a play that often feels as though it's led by men in the traditional sense, Proctor being played by a woman will shift that dynamic, questioning how you re-examine power through performance, and the choices you can make as an actor and a director to use language differently to explore or undermine that power.
To sign up to the schools programme go to https://theyardtheatre.co.uk/local/schools/ or to enquire about a workshop, email katherine@theyardtheatre.co.uk