In 2017, as Kimberly Belflower finished grad school and returned to her family’s farm in Northern Georgia, an area steeped in Southern traditions and religious values— three fixations collided. She had recently read Stacy Schiff’s The Witches, a historical account of the infamous Salem witch trials, mere weeks before journalists broke sexual harassment and abuse allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. The reporting triggered national reckoning with gender, power, and toxic workplace cultures. As more women publicly shared traumatic experiences– and more prominent men faced consequences for decades of malevolence— critics denounced the #MeToo movement as a “witch hunt.”

That invocation led Belflower to revisit Arthur Miller’s The Crucible for the first time since high school. She was shocked how her reading experience of the play had changed as an adult to see apparent gender and power dynamics elucidated in Miller’s work: “I was taught, and almost every  single person I know is taught, that John Proctor is the beacon of goodness and the girls are hysterical. And rereading it, I found myself saying out loud, “John Proctor is the villain.”

Belflower’s newfound perspective on The Crucible and the Salem witch trials emphasized how the sexual power dynamics in #MeToo headlines have a centuries long legacy— Asking how do these values live on? How do they get passed from one generation to the next? How does the diaspora of culture still hold on to these ideals and practices? She zeroed in on the rollercoaster of teenage girlhood as the flash point. “I was thinking about what it is to come of age in a rural place, what it is to  come of age in the church and to be given a series of rules for your life and expectations for what things are supposed to look like. Just thinking about the way that we’re taught canonical literature as one of those systems of power— who gets to be in the canon and who doesn’t.”  Belflower knew that the conversation around curriculum was more than an intellectual debate; it was emblematic of greater cultural forces: Whose stories are celebrated? Who decides? And at what cost?

John Proctor Is The Villain dives into the intricate textures of friendships, pop culture as a tool of both celebration and escapism, how the internet and ‘age of information’ fits into our social climate, and the critical interrogation and reframing of classical works to center female  protagonists and their desires. Teenage girls are often dismissed as dramatic, hormonal, hysterical even— but Belflower’s work is ferocious coming of age story, where young women’s emotions, obsessions, and formidable resilience are not only taken seriously, but celebrated for the messy journeys it takes it find them. I hope after seeing this play that we can continue to think critically about ourselves and to critique the systems and structures of oppression that linger around us— knowing there is always more work to be done.

As it’s stated in the play, “...it’s a really intense time, but that’s what literature is for— that’s what art is for— to make sense of moments like this one.”

Sierra Young 
Director