My parents never censored my reading or theater-going, and I went to a lot
of then-affordable theater when I was very young. Imagine a seat in the
heavens at a Broadway theater for $4.50, and an off-Broadway seat at half
that. Even allowing for the difference in the value of a dollar that was
pretty neat.
The opera is alas a crashing bore musically. Much ineffectual use of
fuguing tunes.
There's a fine book on witchcraft prosecutions in New England, other than
those at Salem, which appear to have been anomalous in not being markedly
class-divided, by John Demos, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the
Culture of Early New England. It's somewhat marred by his psychoanalytic
explanations, but they're well-segregated from the rest of the book. His
The Unredeemed Captive, about a girl taken captive by the Mohawks in the
Deerfield Massacre of 1704, who refused to leave her Indian "family" but
stayed in sporadic contact with her colonial "family," is also I think
essential.
Mark
At 02:46 PM 9/14/2005, you wrote:
>Mark Weiss wrote:
>
>>Agreed, all around.
>
>The Crucible at 12, Mark? Goodness, how corrupting:-) I had to waiting
>until high school to read it. I've never seen it but I have a vigorous
>imagination. I somehow missed the Nicholas Hytner film (I am not scared
>off by Winona Ryder, who I gather was superb, anyway), but that is easily
>remedied via the local video store. I would love to see Robert Ward's
>operatic version which has been around since 1962 and thus has a
>reasonable chance of becoming part of the standard repertoire at least in
>secondary city companies (San Jose is playing it now). The play...well,
>it grows in the imagination each year, regardless of Miller's apparent
>disregard for historical factoids. The University of Missouri/Kansas City
>website pages on the witch trial notes that the historical Proctor was 60+
>when all hell broke loose in Salem, while Abigail Williams was about
>11. No likely involvement there in that event, Miller's own invention,
>but the effect onstage was at issue, as were the dramatic motivators
>involved to undergird the politics: "hearts full of passion, jealousy, and
>hate."
>
>Miller writing The Crucible when he did has to be among the bravest acts
>of any American writer. The only fictional parallel I can recall is
>cinematic, Breaker Morant, an Australian film that was a gloss on the
>Vietnam War. Maybe also on something I don't know about?
>
>A question...apparently when the play was produced on Broadway in 1953,
>the night scene in the woods between Proctor (Arthur Kennedy) and Abigail
>(Madeleine Sherwood) was omitted. Why?
>
>Miller wrote an essay called "Why I Wrote 'The Crucible'" which appeared
>in The New Yorker in 1996. It's been archived. Unlike the NY Times,
>which is well on its way to becoming a slot machine, this archive at least
>is gratis.
>
>http://www.newyorker.com/archive/content/?020422fr_archive02
>
>Ken
>
>--
>Kenneth Wolman
>Proposal Development Department
>Room SW334
>Sarnoff Corporation
>609-734-2538
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