BERKELEY'S NEWS • SEPTEMBER 23, 2022

Oakland Theater Project reimagines, reignites ‘The Crucible’

The Oakland Theater Project recently put on a production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible featuring a BIPOC cast.

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As one walks into Flax Art and Design, actors are already staged on wooden platforms surrounding the audience on three sides. Puritan bonnets hang from the ceiling; a child sits with head down, clicking away on a typewriter. 

At once eerie and understated, the set of Oakland Theater Project’s “The Crucible” brings viewers into a strange, out-of-time space. True to its name, the play quickly ignites with fiery, all-consuming heat.

Ostensibly about the Salem Witch Trials, Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” presents a powerful allegorical critique of 1950s McCarthyism. Appealing to both the past and the present, the play has achieved a certain timeless nature, though it attains new meaning with each iteration. Rather than treating “The Crucible” as a static piece of literature, director Michael Socrates Moran leans into its adaptability, reframing questions of good, evil and the paradoxical pursuit of purity.

Though Moran retains the Puritan elements central to the original text, he places his version in “a near future that has regressed to the past.” Typewritten stage notes illuminate across the back wall, evocative of 20th century print culture. Dressed in a silky red slip dress, Tituba (Paige Mayes) looks fit for the modern runway. Layered with purposeful anachronisms, Moran’s iteration of the play complicates the linear progression of time, though some elements prove a bit confusing. 

Nevertheless, these decisions address some of the key issues with the source material. As Moran suggests in the director’s note, “a play based upon a historical witch hunt where women were the objects of persecution yet centers a male, sacrificial protagonist rings offensive in today’s world.” By casting all female and nonbinary actors — as well as featuring more Black characters beyond Tituba — Moran puts pressure on these issues, forcing the audience to confront rather than ignore them.

While sparse in props and set pieces, the theatrical space blazes under the raw energy of its performers. Ije Success succeeds as the ruthless Abigail, distorting the truth and crying witchcraft at the hands of other villagers. The greedy Thomas Putnam (Rebecca Pingree) proves unintentionally comedic in his nasally, misled logic. Dressed similarly to a millennial in a wide-brimmed hat and studded black boots, Reverend Hale (Jessa Brie Moreno) burns all in his path, his presence as weighted with arrogant authority as the texts he carries. 

Located in the center of the performance space, a singular tree surrounded by glass proves a fixture throughout the performance. It’s where Tituba sings and dances in the woods; it’s where Betty (Kamaile Alnas-Benson) has a seemingly satanic fit. As Mary Warren (Romeo Channer) falters in her loyalties to Abigail and the Proctors, she looks into the glass and sees her own reflection. Facing accusations by their former friends and neighbors, characters stand defenseless in this space, the three transparent walls transforming into the crucible itself. 

When the audience first meets John (Lisa Ramirez) and Elizabeth Proctor (Hailili Knox), they sit on either side of the set piece, the distance reflecting the frigidness of their relationship. However, over the course of the play, their struggles with the court force them to grapple with their marital qualms. In a world divided between accuser and the accused, feigned good and professed bad, John and Elizabeth Proctor carve a new path, though it is soon extinguished in the name of sacrifice. 

As actors shout across the room and play off each other’s energy, fear and anger multiply. Dipping their hands in buckets of white paint, characters outwardly signify their goodness, but instead of washing them clean, the act of proclaiming purity leaves a permanent stain. As small accusations grow into a whirlwind of paranoia, audience members witness the uncomfortable ways in which ethical lines are broken and blurred. There is no longer “good” and “bad;” one is either with the court or against it. 

Whether it’s 1953 or 2022, “The Crucible” remains a vital piece of literature in American cultural consciousness, but where it truly simmers is live on stage. As audience members plunge headfirst into the cauldron, they feel the burn of this blazing world — one that may appear at a distance, but is not entirely unlike our own. 

Contact Lauren Harvey at [email protected]

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