Description

Storytelling lies at the heart of textual representation and typically explores the universality of personal or societal human experience. Driven by conflict, stories often chart a collective or individual struggle set within timeless themes such as adversity, injustice or oppression. Audiences become engaged with how people deal with such problems or situations and how their actions, thoughts and feelings have been conveyed. Composers often adopt universal themes to highlight the moral divide between oppressors and the oppressed or the corrupt and the innocent but this can be offset by inspirational depictions of growth and insight. Knowledge and understanding about humanity and existence itself, is fostered by examining the stories of others. The experiential struggle is not always victorious, but composers have often prompted their audience to recognise and applaud the qualities of resilience, fortitude and integrity that have been revealed. The immediacy created by ‘live’ theatre helps draw an audience into the illusion of reality that unfolds on stage. Drama reflects and interprets social reality and Miller’s play explores how the Salem witch-hunt was triggered by childish ‘sport’ and ‘mischief’ but quickly became a whirlwind of accusation based on ‘spectral evidence’. The accused have no defence against false accusations for once mass hysteria takes hold within a community, social norms and justice are destroyed. Miller argued that ‘such experiences are universal’ and that this ‘play is not history’ but an allegorical representation of the Cold War McCarthyism. The play’s title metaphorically suggests the human suffering that results from any ‘witch-hunt’ situation and Miller was able to convey the victim’s courage and sacrifice in causal, temporal and empathetic terms that an audience can emotionally and intellectually comprehend.