Stop and Discern the Subtext

Goofy wigs and all, perhaps the most illuminating and affecting production of Arthur Miller's weighty play The Crucible I've yet encountered was performed by the Farmington High School Theatre Guild at the Centene Center on March 10, 2102, the final evening of a three-night run.

As the curtain rose on Act I, Scene I, a violent lightening storm processed ever nearer, dramatically perturbing the atmosphere. The pounding rain thundered volubly on the roof of the auditorium making much of the feverish onstage action inaudible, heightening the sense of witness of what came to feel like an almost documentary emotional verisimilitude, the audience in effect peeking through the window of a 17^th century time capsule, straining to hear the words of a society much like our own in its cynical throes of willful disintegration. 

All production photos courtesy of director Kevin Marler

When Tituba (played by Tista Pearson, in a going-for-broke performance equal to her character's dilemma), fell to her knees screaming about "conjuring" and "chicken blood," I abandoned my seat in row K to the empty front row center, where leaning forward—elbows on knees, fists under chin—I planted myself with rapt attention for the duration.

I related this scenario to director Kevin Marler, who teaches drama, public speaking, creative writing, and yearbook at Farmington High School, as well as evening courses at Mineral Area College, when he graciously met with me on the patio at 12 West for multiple cocktails and hours of inquisition about The Guild's production of The Crucible. Sticking my head in a noose of my own making, as I relate it here, I experienced my talk with the straight-shooting Mister Marler as a rare chance to be disabused of many faulty assumptions and misguided hypotheses!

FM: Now that the show is over, do you feel a sense of letdown with the return to the mundane?

Marler: I know what you mean, but that changes and tempers with age. We began work at the end of January, pushing really hard over the last month; I'm ready to relax.

FM: I have to ask, get it out of the way: have you seen Christopher Guest's spoof Waiting for Guffman?

Marler: Yes, and I love it!

FM: That's a relief. You deserve kudos for using your good will and deep roots in the community to push the envelope by staging The Crucible. [Raised eyebrow] Or are you more casual about that than I am?

Marler: I think I am. I know it's an edgy play; I've looked at doing it for years. The students themselves were motivated to do it; they saved it for the big spring show—18 players on stage.

FM: Why were they interested in The Crucible?

Marler: They'd encountered it in the PAGE's program—a middle-school program for advanced students— when they were younger. They're familiar with it: if they already know something, they get excited about it. Also, the play's heavy, so deep. They'd done a lot of comedy recently, and wanted something meaty.

FM: Oh, I thought maybe they were hoping to send a message to the adults who control their lives, their futures...?

Marler: No.

 FM: I'm curious about the placement of the risers—what was the significance of their being so very far upstage? Were you hoping to make a point about the distance between the audience and action?

Marler: No. The Centene Center was constructed as a concert hall, not a theatre. We have to build the set at Truman, haul it over here, and set it up. I would have liked to bring the show closer to the audience, but I needed the curtain to hide the wings. So we lived with it.

FM: And what was your intention with the wigs, many of them askew, such obvious artifice?

Marler: They were period driven. 

FM: Okay. Many of the performances were extraordinary, both in the expression of passion and dispassion, beyond their years, or so it seemed to me. How did you assemble such a talented cast and help them arrive at such authenticity?

Marler: It's one of the things I think I do well, finding the talent and putting it where it belongs.

FM: I was bowled over by the intensity of the anguish expressed by Connor [Purkett who played John Proctor].

Marler: Yes, well with him it was a matter of trimming him back.

FM: And the eroticism between Proctor and Abigail [nimbly played by MaKayla Godat].

Marler: That's difficult. With kids, when you don't want them fooling around, you can't stop them; but to get it on the stage, that's the hard part, to release their inhibitions. They're petrified. This was MaKayla's first show. It takes them a while to define themselves as actors, and step out and really do something. I help them tone it.

FM: How do you tone it?

Marler: I know what I want to see and hear and feel, when I need them to push it harder. Every actor is different. I can tell Gracie [Minnis, who played Mary Warren with such range, authority and finesse] something one time and she gets it.

FM: You give them line readings? Tell them how to say it?

Marler: Sometimes I have to. I have to clarify, I have to help them understand, especially in the fighting lines. They're too young and inexperienced, you have to stop and discern the subtext so they get a clearer picture of what's necessary. With Connor, for instance, I had to repeatedly tell him to back off, soften up on it, Proctor's no he-man. He was coming on too strong. Proctor's also helpless and frustrated in the face of the injustice bearing down on his family; I had to urge Connor to give his anguish a context, an emotional context.

Teenagers always think they know best. They're looking for power, confidence. Part of my job is trying to get them to believe in what they're doing. There are small success stories that people in the audience don't see. But I know what I've got, where we started, how far I've moved them. A director has to have a picture in his head, almost like in a movie. But the realities of high school will throw a bucket of cold water on that real fast.

Every director goes in with a vision and you get as close to it as you can, then see what happens. With the more seasoned ones, you can let them go and find it themselves—that feels good! But sometimes you have to explain things, a lot. Other times, you just put them together and let them run. Especially if they know me and they know each other, they can get there themselves, they know what I want. And that's a good thing.

FM: I want to ask you about the word “awesome” which I thank you for not using, and language impoverishment. In truth, the main reason I went to see the play was to get an infusion of language; I was craving an antidote to the chronic exposure to the A-word, for me something akin to being forced to breathe in second-hand smoke. I confess I was there unaccompanied on a Saturday night hungry for heightened language—complex, literary and theatrical. That the show itself was so riveting came as a total surprise, a welcome and delightful one.  Especially the actors' facility with language: unfamiliar historical words, words of jurisprudence and religion, odd turns of phrase, long sentences and speeches containing contradictory sentiments. They managed it all with aplomb.

Marler: “Awesome” is not in my vocabulary—it's too “ya-ya-ish.” As for language impoverishment, I agree...sometimes the students will sit side-by-side or just across the room and text each other instead of speaking face-to-face. The impoverishment is a result of the whole technological world of social interaction in which they live. I tell them this is one more thing to contend with, they didn't do it to themselves, it was our generation who gave them their cellphones, laptops and the rest of it—Facebook, Tweeting. It's a constant battle, constant distraction. They don't care about anything other than their little social world. They're young, free-spirited, without a sense of responsibility, saying whatever they want without consequences; it's a way of being mean to each other.

Theatre helps. They have to consider meaning, subtext, understanding. I love seeing that happen. Their language faculty is innate, but those who are articulate are so because they read. With musical theatre, singing, interpreting things—they immerse themselves in language. And at this age, I work with them on articulation, projection, their stage voice presentation, pacing; are they too fast, too slow?

The beauty of doing high school theatre is watching them grow into what you saw, and then the process starts again with a new group. Getting people up on the stage for the first time, then getting them a little seasoned, always thinking ahead. Even with the show itself, I anticipate problems, and when they happen, in my mind I already have it solved; my role calls for a lot of strategic thinking and preparation. If this one drops out, who can I move in? How will this role help student x, y, or z prepare for a greater role in next year's show?

FM: What about the politics in the play? You mentioned in the program that you viewed the play “as a timely parable of our own contemporary issues of society today.”

Marler: While I'm passionate about everything I do, for me the overall message of the play is about the perils of extremism—left or right, or whatever—with extremism it always go bad. We saw in this that the Puritans weren't so pure, their judgmental behavior, their assessments of “I'm good; you're bad.” I'm always seeking the common ground.

FM: But in the play's own terms, the hangings only stopped with the looming example of the rebellion in nearby Andover...!

Marler: Yes, the pressure to find a way out was tremendous.

FM: During rehearsals, I'm curious, did the students make any correlations between the action or message of the play and the gunning down of Callion Hamblin on the public's streets on February 20th?

Marler: No. For them it was a piece of local excitement, not an act of oppression. We don't do plays for that purpose...pushing the envelope. We did The Crucible because it was an award-winning American play by Arthur Miller.

FM: What about the social edge, Miller's use of the word “fornication?”

Marler: I didn't censor it; it's not a bad word. I censored the crap out of Of Mice and Men, especially the word “nigger” which was prevalent in a play about prejudice and inequality. But we can't have the good without the bad, can't show the right things without showing the wrong.

Adults can be out of touch with the teen mind. The kids aren't given the credit they deserve. I censor when I have to, but as my mentor always told me: “Ignorant people shouldn't go to the theatre!”

FM: Did you go into Arthur Miller's biography with the kids, his experiences being called to testify before the House Un-American Affairs Committee during the McCarthy era?

Marler: No, I did not. We did research into the historical characters as part of playing their roles. Then we talked about their perception of the characters.

FM: What crucible or crucibles do your students see themselves facing?

Marler: They don't look that far down the road.

FM: Do you?

Marler: Yes I do. I'm always wondering, what's the next group going to bring? As for this one...strongly, they stepped up, up and out of the shadows. That pleased me most.

The Noose Is Up!

“What we call real estate—the solid ground to build a house on—is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.” —The House of the Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne

By now everyone knows that the Rapid Deployment Unit of the St. Louis Police Department occupied themselves by busting some heads Thursday night, their occupation leading them to crack the skulls of a few Occupy the Midwest participants caught in the act of “taking space.” The assaulted squatters were daring to attempt to sleep in a city park on a stormy night in the hopes of creating a new encampment on what was Day One of the Occupy the Midwest conference, a four-day meeting of Occupiers from states to the north, east and west of Missouri. Someone else, presumably not the police, would be called upon to occupy themselves with mopping up the hemoglobin spilled on the sidewalks; head wounds, notoriously, are gushers. Doctors and nurses too occupied themselves dispensing sutures and sympathy, administering salves and analgesics; perhaps even a few prayers were offered up for the dazed and damaged head trauma victims, that they not be permanently brain damaged.

I had been among the hundred or so who attended the General Assembly earlier that evening under the St. Louis arch. But I was not at the mêlée primarily because I sensed there would be one, and my head...I have a dread fear of being clubbed...for better or worse, my head, it's the best of me. In graduate school I had known Kimberly Flynn, a great friend of Tony Kushner's, an absolutely brilliant woman, who after a head banging taxi cab accident felt herself to be never quite the same. Some of the scenes in Angels in America about illness and incapacity are near transcriptions of conversations that she and Tony had about her own sense of diminishment after she was clobbered in the backseat of that cab. Litbloggers Jacob Russell and Stephen Mitchelmore have both written about their head injuries from bicycle accidents, the long recoveries, terrible vulnerability and helplessness, for Stephen the continuing fatigue, loss of productivity. So I keep my distance from police and their penchant to bludgeon with truncheons, and worse.

And His Handiwork

Lightning crackled dramatically and the humidity surpassed the unseasonably high temperature as we talked about the rules under which we would proceed. Roles of the volunteer organizers were defined—timekeeper, note taker, stacker, etc.—and the concept of “progressive stacking” was explained, a principle intended to give priority to voices of those traditionally not heard under present hierarchies. We reviewed the hand signals agreed upon for non-verbal communication, embodied strokes and flutters of consensual meaning—warning, questioning, reminding—prescribed movements to bind our intentions with our acts.

If poetry was to be found under that monument to gateway (and I was attentive to poetry's presence), it was inscribed in those hand signals: index finger up for point of clarification; fist in the air for speaking in one voice; arms crossed over the chest for blocking, to be used rarely and only if something seemed in opposition to core principles of the Occupy movement; and the wiggling of all five fingers on both hands to indicate enthusiastic approbation of whatever proposition was on the ethereal table, something akin to the sprinkling hand motion that usually accompanies the rain washing the itsy-bitsy spider down the spout.

I had told friends that I was going because I wanted to see this second iteration of Occupy with my own unmediated eyes, glean whatever insight might be available, inspiration too if it were there to be garnered. Also, I wanted to support the idea of regionalism, vote with my feet, so to speak—after all, my father Marvin L. Madeson had run for St. Louis County Supervisor almost 40 years ago on the ingenious reform platform of practical regionalism—and I was especially on the lookout for Wisconsin activists in the hopes of  acquiring some sense of their momentum as they struggle in mass protests in Madison against their own Kevin Englers who wish to dispossess first state workers then, once that door is open, all workers of promised pensions, salaries, benefits, rights (all except their own, that is; never their own!).

Missouri State Senator Kevin Engler

And His Legislative Output

 

I had participated in Occupy St. Louis last fall, had been there in the courtyard at the Fed on Day One. Six months ago much was made of the fact, especially on Fox news, of how tolerant the city had been of the protest, how reasonably the police had acted, informing the Occupiers of their intentions to enforce the curfew and evict them from Kiener Plaza, issuing warning, multiple warnings, giving every chance for the protesters to clear out before they (just as the Christmas decorations were scheduled to go up) shut the encampment down. It was a party line that seems to have been integrated by many of the Occupiers as well, this idealization of the cops as fangless vampires who hustle you off the premises if not respectfully, at least unbloodied.

“Individuals whose affairs have reached an utterly desperate crisis almost invariably keep themselves alive with hopes, so much more the airily magnificent as they have the less of solid matter within their grasp whereof to mold any judicious and moderate expectation of good.” —The House of the Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne

The cops were also under the arch on bicycles, stationed maybe twenty yards away from where we congregated, boyishly costumed in short pants rather than riot gear. But still I cringed when St. Louis Occupiers told our guests that our cops weren't that bad, assuring them that it wasn't Oakland, that they shouldn't be afraid. My forearms instinctively crossed over my chest, and I roundly kicked myself for not having brought a placard with the bolded language of the SEC-sanctioned caveat placed in every securities prospectus next to the 1, 3, 5, and 10-year graphs: Past results are no guarantee of future performance.

“Can you not see the blood on my head?” —Arthur Miller, The Crucible

Someone pointed out that as the weather conditions were worsening and the lightning storm was rolling our way, we would be wise to move away from the stainless steel arch and adjourn to Kiener Plaza under the protection of the balustraded concrete terrace. Back at Kiener, a minstrel show was enacted adjacent to the amphitheater. After a brief discussion about the overwhelming police presence—for now they crowded among us, no remove at all—someone invited a representative of the police to address the Occupiers and explain why they were there impinging on our right to assemble and speak freely amongst ourselves.

 “There is, at least, no flattery in my humble line of art.” —The House of the Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne

 An officer in a white shirt, higher ranking than the blue-shirts on the bikes, came forward to address us. But he would not speak up, a pretense at once undermining and making a mockery of the just moments ago articulated principle of progressive stacking, he would not permit his own voice (the voice of unabashed state Power) to be heard. He stated his concerns about public safety, blah, blah, blah, in a near whisper, and one of the Occupiers, a naif (and a goddamn fool!), repeated his words, calling them out for the small crowd gathered round. It would prove to be a canny exercise in preemptive capitulation and co-optation, a symbological violence foreshadowing the material violence soon to be so disgracefully and—God help us—lawfully (depend on it) manifested.