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What Arthur Miller Intends to Present in the Play
" `The Crucible,' " Miller says, "describes the way social panic is generated. It has a dream quality to it: People without any truly rational reason lose a grip on reality and begin accusing each other and consuming each other with suspicion." Miller blames the political climate for the play's frosty reception in 1953; as he watched the opening-night audience, "an invisible sheet of ice formed over their heads, thick enough to skate on," he wrote in "Timebends." Oddly, an off-Broadway production with what he considered an inferior cast was a great success five years later. Some critics praised Miller's revisions, but he hadn't made any; what had changed was not his script but the times. As one playwright says, "There may be hanging in the air today a feeling that we really don't understand reality, to the point where anything can happen," he theorizes. "The elevator can suddenly dive, an airplane turn over on its back." In this uncertain universe, "the play is working on a different level," he says. "I find it hard to name, but it's there -- there is some apprehension that has no definition." (The information is taken from Span, Paula. "Miller's Dialogue With the World. Washington Post 15 Dec. 1996. 6 Oct. 2005 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-~srv/style/longterm/review96/farthurmiller.htm> |
