The others are hung for not pleading.
Explain the process of small and large class freeze frame activities
To begin with, we were separated into small groups of 5 and in those groups we were asked to discuss the 5 most important scenes in the play “The Crucible”. My group decided that the opening scene, in which girls of the village participate in ancient rituals with Tituba the slave, was the most important scene of the play. We believed this because the whole events of the play were caused by this one scene. Had the girls not been caught by Reverend Hale then they would not have been accused of witchcraft and no-one in the village would have been hung or imprisoned. The next scene that we chose was the one in which the audience discover that John Procter had been having an affair with Abigail. This scene is also extremely important because Abigail only decides to accuse Goody Proctor, John Proctor’s wife, of witchcraft when John Proctor calls off the affair. The scene in which Abigail stabs herself with a pin and accuses Goody Proctor of being behind it was selected as our third scene. This then leads to Goody Proctor going on trial and ultimately being hung. Our fourth scene was the scene in which Abigail runs away with the Reverend’s money, this scene was not shown in the stage play but is present in the film version and the original play. We believe that this is an important scene and one that the stage play missed out on. It shows that Abigail was truly just acting and was falsely accusing the people of the village. The fifth and final scene that we chose was the last scene of the play in which the play’s main protagonist, John Proctor, and his wife are hung. The small group freeze frames helped us to gain a greater understanding of the play as we understood what the key moments of the play were and why.
We were then given 5 scenes to create a freeze frame of in a large group. We then had to decide on one line that our character might be thinking at that point in the play, a way of thought tracking our own character. The first scene we put into a freeze frame was the ceremony in the woods. We had a time limit in which to create the freeze frame and initially we didn’t work well as a group, struggling to get everyone’s points across. I took the role of one of the women performing the ritual and chose my thought track as “I finally feel free from the tight grips of men and the constraints of Christianity.” We worked much more efficiently whilst making the second freeze frame and created the scene with time to spare, however not everyone felt that they had their fair say as three or four people took control and told people what to do. I chose to be someone being trialled for witchcraft and decided to say “How can honest people condemn me to death for a crime they know I didn’t commit.” Our third scene was the part of the play in which the girls gain power within the courtroom. By this point we had fully gelled as a group and after hearing everyone’s suggestions, we decided to go with my idea to have the girls controlling the judges like puppets. This works on two levels within our freeze frame as they were controlling both literally and figuratively. In this scene I was a girl controlling a judge who I thought might be thinking “So easy to manipulate, although I can’t help but feel a pang of guilt.” Our fourth and final scene was the final hanging of John Proctor and Rebecca Nurse. Within this scene I was a girl from the courtroom who I imagined saying “I didn’t mean for this to go so far . . . I only did it to get out of trouble.” I noticed a real difference as the task went on, the more our group gelled the more powerful our scenes became. I feel this may be because once we had gelled; everyone’s views and opinions were heard, giving us a greater selection of ideas to choose from. Doing the large group freeze frames really helped to understand the characters thoughts and emotions, especially as we had to thought track the characters we were portraying which helped to get inside the character’s heads.
The next task involved looking at Forum theatre and how the concept (created by Augusto Boal) could further our understanding of the play. To begin with, our teacher created a short piece of drama and selected a group of students to act it out. After the first time through, they were asked to do it again but this time actors and characters would be added and/or swapped and random intervals decided by the teacher. At first the forum theatre worked with the story evolving with each addition of a character but towards the end of the forum theatre, the story began to collapse. I believe this to be down to the fact that too many characters were added. It forced people to talk over each other and eventually shout as they weren’t being heard by the audience. Overall I don’t believe in our case that the forum theatre helped with our understanding of The Crucible but had so many characters not been added, it would have.
To conclude, I believe the explorative strategies we used helped to deepen our understanding of The Crucible and the playwright's intentions. Furthering our understanding of the characters thoughts and emotions and why Arthur Miller wrote the play.
