Not Your High School Crucible

Like many students before her, Sadie Sink was forced to read The Crucible in school. She found it “incredibly boring.” But her perspective has changed now that she’s starring in John Proctor Is the Villain, a comedy set in a conservative Baptist town about a group of teens who realize the witchcraft-accused protagonist isn’t a good guy. “Arthur Miller’s play is a lot more interesting and profound,” Sink says, “when you’re reading it through the lens of what these young girls are trying to say in our play.”

Her first big project since wrapping production on the final season of Netflix’s Stranger Things, Sink, 22, gravitated toward the authentic nature of the script, written by Kimberly Belflower (Lost Girl and Gondal): “I’ll often read scripts for high-schoolers or young women that are trying to connect with my generation, but it’s rare to find the right fit for a writer who can capture that without dumbing us down.”

Belflower came up with the idea in 2017 after reading historian Stacy Schiff’s book The Witches, which dramatizes the Salem witch trials. She was also watching the fallout over Harvey Weinstein’s sexual-assault allegations from her family farm in Appalachia. “There was something about being back in the landscape where I grew up,” the playwright says, “and also with all what was going on in the news, where I was thinking a lot about my teenage self and things that happened at my high school.” Belflower was more of a homebody than a partygoer, often getting debriefed by friends who did go out in her rural Georgia hometown. This “new vocabulary” that #MeToo offered, though, made her realize the stories these friends relayed had a dark undercurrent. “I was like, Oh. That wasn’t a weird thing that happened at a party, that was assault,” Belflower says. “Then Woody Allen called Me Too a ‘witch hunt’ in an interview. I felt the need to reread The Crucible,” says Belflower. That reassessment proved to be the creative kindling in her mind. In Miller’s play, Proctor is the tragic hero whose affair sets the witchcraft accusations in motion. Belflower says she thought to herself, Wait, has John Proctor been a stealth villain this entire time?

Belflower showed director Danya Taymor a draft in 2019, but the timing didn’t align. “I sort of made peace with it,” Taymor recalls. “Then it came back around to me because Sadie had gotten the play, fell in love with it, and wanted to do it.” They soon all talked about doing another production. “The three of us and a group of actors did a workshop about two years ago,” she adds, “and it started the wheels in motion for this.” There was never any doubt that Taymor, who won the Tony last year for directing The Outsiders, would do this. “I don’t know why I’m being so drawn or pulled to explore the teenage psyche,” she says, noting the age parallels of both shows. “That’s where we become the people who we are.”

Sink had some trepidations about returning to Broadway (she played Annie as an alternate in a 2013 revival). “Going back was something that really, really scared me, but it was something I felt like I needed to do, especially after Stranger Things ended,” she says. It helps that she really resonated with the material. “These girls are still trying to figure out what feminism is and what’s the right thing to do. There’s a lot of changes happening, not only in who they are as people and the obstacles they’re facing, but also in the world and what society is pushing young girls to be outspoken about,” says Sink. She believes the current political climate only gives the play new relevance. “Even if you haven’t read The Crucible and it doesn’t interest you, we unfortunately find ourselves in a very similar position in our country when it comes to the men in charge. Its relevancy isn’t lost on us.”

In previews March 20 at the Booth Theatre.

Correction: Stacy Schiff’s book The Witches is a historical account, not a novel.