Site Specific The Crucible Scenes

We had dissions with the female characters and picked out the top three important characters which are Mary, Mrs Proctor and Abigail. They all have a part within the story but we need to have people to play the characters of Tituba who was blamed and Betty who is the possessed child within the beginning scene we decided that we should have the younger class playing these roles because multi rolling may confuse the audience and will be more difficult for us.

We looked at scene one and we decided that we wanted to cut parts out that we think we don't think we need to be a part of out piece because we want to do a adaptation of The Crucible we had to remove characters completely from it and taking out different lines to make it make more sense with the story line because we don't want the performance to be too long.

We all agreed as a group that we liked the relationship between Abigail and John Proctor with the affair we had a big discussion that we should get rid of it because this is why they started to blame people for witchcraft but we think that it was because of the girls dancing in the woods we all decided that it brings something else to the story and gives it more drama but this did not happen within the real witch trails but it will go well with our performance and give it something different.

As a group we looked at the Putnam Family Ann and Mr Putnam and thought we should remove them from the story. These people have tried to have children 7 times and have lost them Ann decides  to blame the supernatural as the cause because this is what she believes but it is within herself and to do with her health. This means girls would be blamed more from events like these happening because everyone believed that is was them who were doing this to people. This got rid of a section within the scene and only means we need to keep the religion within some of the scenes.

The last characters we decided to remove from the play was Rebecca and Corey Guiles. These were not important to the story we wanted to tell because they both believed the same thoughts. They both did not agree with what was going on and believed that people were making it up and decided to watch and see what happens we think they did not bring a big part to the performance and think more characters will be better.

Site Specific Research and Planning

The Crucible is based on true events that have happened with the Salem Witch Trails the story is around the people of the town saying that the girls were witching's because of certain events that have happened. I decided to do some research on the internet and have put information I have found from websites that will help me more within knowing more about The Crucible. 

Here is some the research about the play: 

The Crucible is a 1953 play by American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during 1692/93. Miller wrote the play as an allegory for McCarthyism, when the United States government ostracized people for being communists. Miller himself was questioned by the House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities in 1956 and convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to identify others present at meetings he had attended.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crucible


I also wanted to look into the plot overview to have an idea of the whole story so when we started it had an idea of what was going on while I was performing.

 In the Puritan New England town of Salem, Massachusetts, a group of girls goes dancing in the forest with a black slave named Tituba. While dancing, they are caught by the local minister, Reverend Parris. One of the girls, Parris’s daughter Betty, falls into a coma-like state. A crowd gathers in the Parris home while rumors of witchcraft fill the town. Having sent for Reverend Hale, an expert on witchcraft, Parris questions Abigail Williams, the girls’ ringleader, about the events that took place in the forest. Abigail, who is Parris’s niece and ward, admits to doing nothing beyond “dancing.”

While Parris tries to calm the crowd that has gathered in his home, Abigail talks to some of the other girls, telling them not to admit to anything. John Proctor, a local farmer, then enters and talks to Abigail alone. Unbeknownst to anyone else in the town, while working in Proctor’s home the previous year she engaged in an affair with him, which led to her being fired by his wife, Elizabeth. Abigail still desires Proctor, but he fends her off and tells her to end her foolishness with the girls.

Betty wakes up and begins screaming. Much of the crowd rushes upstairs and gathers in her bedroom, arguing over whether she is bewitched. A separate argument between Proctor, Parris, the argumentative Giles Corey, and the wealthy Thomas Putnam soon ensues. This dispute centers on money and land deeds, and it suggests that deep fault lines run through the Salem community. As the men argue, Reverend Hale arrives and examines Betty, while Proctor departs. Hale quizzes Abigail about the girls’ activities in the forest, grows suspicious of her behavior, and demands to speak to Tituba. After Parris and Hale interrogate her for a brief time, Tituba confesses to communing with the devil, and she hysterically accuses various townsfolk of consorting with the devil. Suddenly, Abigail joins her, confessing to having seen the devil conspiring and cavorting with other townspeople. Betty joins them in naming witches, and the crowd is thrown into an uproar.

A week later, alone in their farmhouse outside of town, John and Elizabeth Proctor discuss the ongoing trials and the escalating number of townsfolk who have been accused of being witches. Elizabeth urges her husband to denounce Abigail as a fraud; he refuses, and she becomes jealous, accusing him of still harboring feelings for her. Mary Warren, their servant and one of Abigail’s circle, returns from Salem with news that Elizabeth has been accused of witchcraft but the court did not pursue the accusation. Mary is sent up to bed, and John and Elizabeth continue their argument, only to be interrupted by a visit from Reverend Hale. While they discuss matters, Giles Corey and Francis Nurse come to the Proctor home with news that their wives have been arrested. Officers of the court suddenly arrive and arrest Elizabeth. After they have taken her, Proctor browbeats Mary, insisting that she must go to Salem and expose Abigail and the other girls as frauds.

The next day, Proctor brings Mary to court and tells Judge Danforth that she will testify that the girls are lying. Danforth is suspicious of Proctor’s motives and tells Proctor, truthfully, that Elizabeth is pregnant and will be spared for a time. Proctor persists in his charge, convincing Danforth to allow Mary to testify. Mary tells the court that the girls are lying. When the girls are brought in, they turn the tables by accusing Mary of bewitching them. Furious, Proctor confesses his affair with Abigail and accuses her of being motivated by jealousy of his wife. To test Proctor’s claim, Danforth summons Elizabeth and asks her if Proctor has been unfaithful to her. Despite her natural honesty, she lies to protect Proctor’s honor, and Danforth denounces Proctor as a liar. Meanwhile, Abigail and the girls again pretend that Mary is bewitching them, and Mary breaks down and accuses Proctor of being a witch. Proctor rages against her and against the court. He is arrested, and Hale quits the proceedings.

The summer passes and autumn arrives. The witch trials have caused unrest in neighboring towns, and Danforth grows nervous. Abigail has run away, taking all of Parris’s money with her. Hale, who has lost faith in the court, begs the accused witches to confess falsely in order to save their lives, but they refuse. Danforth, however, has an idea: he asks Elizabeth to talk John into confessing, and she agrees. Conflicted, but desiring to live, John agrees to confess, and the officers of the court rejoice. But he refuses to incriminate anyone else, and when the court insists that the confession must be made public, Proctor grows angry, tears it up, and retracts his admission of guilt. Despite Hale’s desperate pleas, Proctor goes to the gallows with the others, and the witch trials reach their awful conclusion.

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/crucible/summary.html


We also watched the film so we got to see how others have played these characters and I think this have helped us out a lot to see whats scenes we are going to do from it and how we want to play it and display it to the audience in our own way.

These are the main points within The Crucible that should be shown.

Site Specific The Venue

We have be looking at a location where we want to have our site specific performance we found that these two venues would best suit the performance that we were looking in doing.

We looked into Temple Manor as our first place we all agree that this is a fantastic building which has lots of space to perform inside or outside. This building is in Strood which is not too far away to travel if we needed to bring set with us and getting our audience down so we can have as many people to come and watch. This is open to the public to go into for free so we would need to be in contact so we can see if we could book it out for the evening so we have time to set up and decide where we are going to perform the different scenes. I think this has a great space and many different room using the outside space well because we are not near a main road we would not have any problems with sound but with lights we may need to think about brining light to plug in so people can see us in areas that will be darker than others. This building is perfect for a promenade performance we will just have to look into where we are going to perform each scene to make sure the settings goes with what is going on.

The second venue is within Rochester which is Guildhall Museum this was build in 1687 this is closer to the audience and us so this will mean that it will be a lot easier to travel items that we may need for the performance and to get a full audience in. This has huge spaces of rooms and would be great to perform in the main hall building but because this is a Museum we may not be able to move items around because they are difficult to move and very old items so they have to be kept safe. This is also open to the public and is open more so it may be hard to find a time where we can ask to book it out and the price should be cheaper because its from the council. This is also historical like Temple Manor so it will be perfect for a historical piece. The main hall which has a huge space would be good for physical theatre moving around to different parts of the room having the audience sitting down or standing up and moving them into different rooms that would suit the type of scenes we are doing.

We all spoke together and agree that temple Manor is going to be the place to perform because it's not  a museum this gives us an advantage for more space and free time not to worry about if we are allowed to move items. Temple Manor has brought us to a play called "The Crucible" and we think that it will suit this time of venue because it was set in the old times with the witch trials we then looked at doing a physical theatre scene which involves all of us chanting and involving lifts to begin our scenes.

Ghost Stories Devising

Today we have been coming up with some dialogue for our paparazzi scene we thought about having a group of teens talking about this big celeb coming out of rehab but we wanted something that was believable so we decided of having a TV crew having a chat about their show who should be on the next and they want to have an interview with them we wanted to show how the media can show views about people that are not true saying that it was reported that the person did that which it's not true because it did not come from that person's mouth. They just want him on the show because he is being talked about in the news at the moment so they want their ratings to go higher so they can become more popular from him.

This is the script that we came up with we are planning on added more interruptions in so it looks like we are in a meeting we want to make this as natural as possible like we are having a normal conversation. I find this difficult when acting because I always feel like I over think everything so I don't want it to sounds like I am staying facts it needs to be relaxed like I am just talking to a couple of work friends. This is something I need to improve on and am planning on watching some TV shows like the office to get an idea of how they do comedy and then move on to be serious in a normal situation. 

Ghost Stories Devising

We have been working on the physical theatre for the paparazzi we had a workshop which we have used some techniques from to show in our piece. This is what our piece is looking like and we have included different styles to make it different and original.

We are planing on having some dialogue at the end in a news story explaining he has just come out of rehab we are going to be looking into something we can create so we can come up with a script that sounds natural like we are having a normal conversation.

Ghost Stories Devising

We wanted to come up with a new story for our showcase so we looked at doing something to do around drug abuse I mentioned that could hit the audience so they don't know what we are talking about and then just one line they realise that the was around that topic I really liked the idea of us being in different places of the room and saying things like what it made us feel, the smell just wants you having more and once you tried it you never stop this get the audience more interested to see what we are talking about. Again we wanted to mix things up and have it so it was not just about drug taking that their was a meaning behind it going back to the haunting of it. We discussed together about celebrities and how they have gotten involved in having drugs and how this could after their career and what the public and news reporters think about them. We then went on the idea of them coming on out rehab I mentioned the paparazzi could be trying to talk to this person who has just come out asking them lots of questions to see what they are like now and how have they changed we all discussed questions we could ask the celebrity as the paparazzi. This would work really well because the drugs could be haunting the celebrity for the rest of their life and all the chat shows, new reports and paparazzi all the questions they were asked could be making them feel haunted the fact that it will never be forgotten. These are the questions we were going to record for the beginning part when the celeb is just coming out of rehab: 

• What will you do now? 
• Is it true your parents won't talk to you?

• How has your use of pills impacted your career?

• How will you recover from this financially?

• How do you feel about the studio cancelling your contract?

• Did you know your girlfriend is seeing someone else?

• Do you regret that Instagram picture?

• When will you return to twitter?

• Why was your rehab extended? 

We are going to be carrying on with this next lesson coming up with different movenments to make this physical theatre piece like the celeb it being stalked with lots of cameras and putting some diagloue in at the end. 

Ghost Stories Devising

As a group we decided that we were going to carry on working with the terrorist attack piece with the suicide scene we wanted to show this in a physical theatre way but not making into a dance trying to follow the story with Lee Rigby that it did haunt Danny Cornelius with what happened in his life before that as well.

We have come up with different parts in his life were he had some horrible things happen to him I said to start about having a shoelace that we could all be doing the same action to portray that he is not happy the way his life is and he is thinking of killing himself. We agreed to be in different stages of his hanging himself so we are all doing different movements to show how we feel at this point while Rob who is writing what you write in a suicide note thinking about what he wants to say as his last words.

The next part to the piece is the necklace scene Lewis and I are shopping in a robot way to make it unnaturally because we did not want to just show this happening in a natural way and then I get the necklace stolen from me a knife point.

Following another section of Danny's life the cashpoint scene where he is put at gun point and has to give them all his money we showed this by making a cashpoint out of a table and doing different movement's and me handing Lewis the money like he was getting cash out and him giving it to Lorna.

The next part was the Lee Rigby when he saw this all happening we are showing this in a puppet way like this person is being tortured and is being stabbed to death and Rob is going to be doing narration throughout all of these pieces to show what was happening.

The last section is the suicide where Danny decides he wants to end his life we are having all of the shoelaces put together and showing how he decided he just wanted to end his life like that.

Overall this shows that it can haunt someone for the rest of their life and it could mean they don't want to live anymore I am really liking the way this has been put together it looks really affective. We just need the audience to understand that we are showing in different parts we are planning the character Danny hopefully with Rob's narrations the audience should understand the whole story line.

All of these sections of Danny's life are true and we wanted to shows these in different ways so the audience understands that one of us is Danny the victim and the other is the person doing the crime.