The most moving and most powerful drama ever read, needs to be seen in this way to. The crucible cannot be performed as a feel good type of show
The mass hysteria, the screams of Abigail’s company in the courtroom, proctors impassioned outcry, and the cries of the innocent echoing in the courtroom, proctors impassioned outcry, and the cries of the innocent echoing those accused during the period of the McCarthyism ‘Red Scare’, make the most disturbing yet powerful scenes in performance history. It is in these moments that often define the success of any production of the ‘The Crucible’, for it in these moments that theatrical artifice can be exposed. To evoke the irrationality, mass frenzy, and rampant fear so characteristic of the play, the audience must be included into the dramatic action and caught in the narrative moment, the invisibility of sprits must be made visible and proctors emotional discourse must move the hearers to collection. An exaggerated staging of hysteria would brake curtains of fiction with comic absurdity, while the dramatisation of these moments with energy lacking would spell certain failure in enrapturing the audience in the meaninglessness. A delicate balance between these extremes needs to be achieved and a rhythm of performance needs to be required.
