Cleveland Centennial: The Crucible

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

The Crucible

TRG Reality

As I got into my car to leave, Molly Kazan came out of the house ... It was impossible to keep looking into her distraught eyes.

She pointed out toward the road and told me that I no longer understood the country, that everybody who lived on that road approved of the Committee and what had been done.

After I had said that I ould not agree with their decision, she asked if I was staying at my house, a half hour away, and I said that I was on my way to Salem.

Her eyes widened in sudden apprehension. "You're not going to equate witches with this!"

- Arthur Miller, Timebends

Arthur Miller's play The Crucible debuted at the Martin Beck Theatre in New York City in January, 1953. It was not a roaring success.

"Arthur Miller is a problem playwright in both senses of the word." - Walter Kerr, Herald Tribune

"There is too much excitement and not enough emotion in The Crucible." - The New York Times

The original production was directed by an idiot, Jed Harris, who believed that since this was a period piece the performers should perform "classically" which in his mind meant everyone had to face out at the audience, never looking at each other. If you know anything about the play, or have seen the movie adaptation, you can see how this would not serve the text.

"The Crucible" was an act of desperation. Much of my desperation branched out, I suppose, from a typical Depression-era trauma - the blow struck on the mind by the rise of European Fascism and the brutal anti-Semitism it had brought to power. But by 1950, when I began to think of writing about the hunt for Reds in America, I was motivated in some great part by the paralysis that had set in among many liberals who, despite their discomfort with the inquisitors' violations of civil rights, were fearful, and with good reason, of being identified as covert Communists if they should protest too strongly.

- Arthur Miller, The New Yorker, October 1996

Put simply, Miller wrote this play in response to the House Committee on Un-American Activities ongoing efforts to publicly name and shame present and former members of the Communist Party, or anyone who even had affiliations with the Communist Party.

What I have found most ironic (when Great Lakes Theater Festival produced The Crucible a few years ago, and I played Miller in the original drama Seeing Red) is it was not Miller's own persecution before HUAC that inspired the piece. That came a few years later. And his testimony at that time makes you wonder if he were channeling the spirit of John Proctor, or if Proctor's psyche is so much a product of Miller's own he couldn't help but be surprised and shocked (in the way that Proctor is) that grown men choose or refuse not to respond to reason.

From Seeing Red by Daniel Hahn
adapted from Arthur Miller's Testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities
June 14, 1956

COMMITTEE Do you know or have you know a person by the name of Arnaud d’Usseau?

MILLER I have met him.

COMMITTEE Have you been in any Communist Party sessions with Arnaud d’Usseau?

MILLER I was present at meetings of Communist Party writers in 1947, about five or six meetings.

COMMITTEE Where were those meetings held?

MILLER They were held in someone’s apartment. I don’t know whose it was.

COMMITTEE Were those meetings closed?

MILLER I wouldn’t be able to tell you that.

COMMITTEE Was anyone there who, to your knowledge, was not a Communist?

MILLER I wouldn’t know that.

COMMITTEE Have you ever made application for membership in the Communist Party?

MILLER In 1939, I believe it was, or in 1940, I went to attend a Marxist study course in the vacant store open to the street in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. I there signed some form or another.

COMMITTEE That was an application for membership in the Communist Party, was it not?

MILLER I would not say that. I am here to tell you what I know.

COMMITTEE Tell us what you know.

MILLER This is now sixteen years ago. That is half a lifetime away. I don’t recall, and I haven’t been able to recall and, if I could, I would tell you the exact nature of that application. I understood then that this was to be, as I have said, a study course. I was there for about three or four times, perhaps. It was of no interest to me and I didn’t return.

COMMITTEE Who invited you to attend?

MILLER I wouldn’t remember. It was a long time ago.

COMMITTEE Tell us, if you please, sir, about these meetings with the Communist Party writers which you said you attended in New York City.

MILLER I attended these meetings in order to locate my ideas in relation to Marxism, because I had been assailed for years by all kinds of interpretations of what Communism was, what Marxism was, and I went there to discover where I stood. And I listened and said very little, I think, the four or five times.

COMMITTEE What occasioned your presence? Who invited you there?

MILLER I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know.

COMMITTEE Can you tell us who was there when you walked into the room?

MILLER Mr. Chairman, I understand the philosophy behind this question and I want you to understand mine. When I say this, I want you to understand that I am not protecting the Communists or the Communist Party. I am trying to, and I will, protect my sense of myself. I could not use the name of another person and bring trouble on him. I ask you not to ask me that question. I will tell you anything about myself, as I have.

COMMITTEE These were Communist Party meetings, were they not?

MILLER I will be perfectly frank with you in anything relating to my activities. I take the responsibility for everything I have ever done, but I cannot take responsibility for another human being.

COMMITTEE This record shows, does it not, Mr. Miller, that these were Communist Party meetings? Is that correct?

MILLER I understood them to be Communist writers who were meeting regularly.

COMMITTEE I respectfully suggest that you answer the question as to who it was that you saw at these meetings. May I say that moral scruples, however laudable, do not constitute legal reason for refusing to answer the question. You are directed to answer the question, Mr. Miller.

MILLER All I can say, sir, is that my conscience will not permit me to use the name of another person.

COMMITTEE Your are directed to answer the question as to whether or not Arnaud d’Usseau was chairman of the meeting of the Communist Party writers in New York City in 1947 at which you were in attendance.

MILLER I have given you my answer, sir.

COMMITTEE I ask you now, sir, whether or not Sue Warren was in attendance at this meeting of the Communist Party writers held in New York City in 1947?

MILLER I have given you my answer.

COMMITTEE Do you know Sue Warren? Did you decline to answer the question?

MILLER I tell you, sir, that I have given my answer.

COMMITTEE I am not satisfied with that. That is entirely too vague. Now what I want is a positive statement as to whether or not you will answer that question.

MILLER Sir, I believe I have given you the answer that I must give.

COMMITTEE Let us get that straight. As I understand, you decline to answer the question for the reason that you gave when you declined to answer the first question, or at least when you gave an answer that was not deemed acceptable, is that it?

MILLER That is correct.

COMMITTEE Are you cognizant of the fact that your play The Crucible, with respect to witch hunts in 1692, was the case history of a series of articles in the Communist press drawing parallels to the investigations of Communists and other subversives by Congressional committees?

MILLER The comparison is inevitable, sir.