WITCHES (working title)

A CRUCIBLE ADAPTATION

THE PITCH

Using Arthur Miller’s CRUCIBLE as a jumping off point, WITCHES places the play’s characters and crises in the world of Appalachia’s snake handling churches and tent revivals. Instead of focusing on how the men handle their truth in the face of misogynist and racist religious violence, WITCHES turns to the young women of the story, focusing particularly on what the girls really do in the woods. As the witch hunt barrels towards the young women in this congregation, do they abandon each other? Could they save each other instead?

My initial impulse is that this adaptation takes place primarily in two locations: the woods and the pulpit. I’m interested in making the audience both implicit congregation and teenagers in the forest. Through teenage rituals in the woods and church sermons for the endtimes, a witch hunt builds. The snakes are placed upon the witches. Will they bite?

THE WORLD

THE GIRLS

the PREACHERmen

questions for development

• Violence at the hands of a religious state feels closer to home than allegory. How can we hold the opportunities for broader cultural allegory while moving the time period forward? Does the Red Scare allegory hold? How do current attitudes towards communism and leftist thought impact this adaptation?

• Does this piece focus on one kind of witch hunt or many? As a queer Appalachian raised in church, I can’t help but draw an immediate line to conversion therapy and religious violence against queer and trans youth. Who, if anyone, is queer in this story?

• Abigail and Mary are pitted against each other in desperation, and at the hands of a man who holds power over both of them. Does my adaptation lean into the tragedy of being forced to throw each other under the bus when there is little opportunity for solidarity- OR- is this a world in which solidarity is possible, even if complicated? What does it look like if the girls get a win?

• I currently have more clarity around how the young women and the older men function in this adaptation. How does a Tituba character live in this world, especially when there are so many iterations of her and so many include their own violent erasure? How might these iterations meet? How does Elizabeth or Martha live in this world?

• How (if at all) will JOHN PROCTOR IS THE VILLAIN change conversations within the field around John Proctor’s morality? How does this new work interact with another new work attempting to complicate the source?

• What kinds of folk magic, conjuring, or even modern “witchy” practices exist in this world? What really happens in the woods? What magic or witchcraft emerges from the naked dance? How real is the magic or witchcraft in this story?

• Spatially, does this show take place in an actual tent that can be taken down and put up for touring purposes, or would I develop this for a stage first?

• If (as is the hope) I were to begin work on this as a student at Yale, what other programming could I plan around the shows and development to support progressive Appalachian/rural organizing in the midst of a second Trump administration? Considering JD Vance loudly touts his history with Yale and is responsible for one of the most popular modern stories of Appalachia (Hillbilly Elegy), how might I leverage the resources of this Ivy to tell a different story and work in direct opposition to this other Yale graduate?

THE AURAL WORLD