Abigail Kuhns
This year’s junior class play, The Crucible, came to life at Stow-Munroe Falls high school. Director and set designer, Robert Putka, announced the junior class play, last year, and drama club has been preparing ever since.
Along with Putka, Tim Pokelsek assisted as the producer and Kyra Raymond-Smith and Josof Ruttig worked on the show as student directors.
Cast and crew auditioned and was determined back in Dec. and started rehearsal in Jan. After two months, the cast and crew was geared up and ready to perform for the four showings.
Lead roles this year included juniors Libby Tritten as Abigail Williams, Dallas Mapes as John Proctor and Ocean Noland as Mary Warren.
“I think we had a lot of success and I am proud of our performances because we all worked really hard, and we came a long way from our first rehearsal,” Tritten said.
The Crucible was written in the 1950’s by Arthur Miller but was set to take place in 1692, in Salem Massachusetts, during the Puritan era.
Miller wrote the play during times of questionable communism in court. He wrote it to portray the fact that the same events happening had already happened hundreds of years ago during the “Salem Witch Trials” in hopes to stop it from happening again.
Over the course of the play nearly one hundred people in the town had been accused of witchcraft and there was no way to prove who actually was a witch. The event started when a group of teenage girls, lead by Abigail Williams, were caught dancing in the woods and the daughter of the town’s reverend was in a Coma. The girls figured out a way to get out of trouble and and the result was lying and putting innocent people in jail and innocent people being hanged. Other townspeople went to court and were just trying to make it all stop, but things did not really go as planned.
“My favorite part of all of it was meeting new people and making new friends in the cast and crew. During the first performance I was nervous but after it went so well, I was no longer nervous because I had so much trust in myself and the cast and crew and knew we could all do it,” Tritten noted.
Everyone in the audience could easily tell how much hard work and thought was put into the production from the costumes, to the set, to the actors, to the accents and most importantly to the emotion.
“I enjoyed watching because the acting was very good, and you could tell the cast and crew worked hard. My favorite part would have to be the conversation between John Proctor and Elizabeth because the acting was spectacular and the scene was interesting,” junior Charisma Carnes said.
The Crucible was filled with dramatic scenes along with cast members bringing some joy, passion, humor and remorse to the play.