Emotions run high in Ascension’s 'The Crucible'

• By ROBIN MILLER
• Arts writer
• Published: Nov 1, 2009

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Emotions are sometimes so intense that cast members are exhausted at the end of rehearsal.

You wouldn’t think that would be the case. They are actors, after all, stepping into someone else’s story. Someone else’s life.

Leaving it behind should be easy, right?

“A lot of people think actors don’t experience what their characters are going through,” Heidi Alford Frederic said. “But they do go through this, and they experience it physically, emotionally and spiritually every night.”

And really, there’s no way around giving it all when performing Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. The play wouldn’t be plausible otherwise.

But that won’t be a worry when Ascension Community Theatre opens The Crucible on Thursday, Nov. 5, in the Pasqua Theatre in Gonzales.

Frederic is the director of this production. She also teaches theater at St. Amant High School.

“I was teaching theater at Dutchtown High School when I first directed this play,” Frederic said. “It was amazing how the students rose to the occasion and became involved in the parts. But with adults, it’s different. We’ve been able to bring this play to a new level.”

The Crucible is set in 1690s Salem, Mass., and tells the story of what happens when a fear-ridden town puts truth on trial. Miller based his story on actual transcripts of the Salem Witch Trials. But it’s the timing of the play that’s most interesting.

Miller wrote the play in 1953 as a response to the U.S. government’s blacklisting of accused communists. Sen. Joseph McCarthy compiled the list, which was investigated by the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Many Hollywood actors, writers and directors were targeted in this investigation, and those who refused to cooperate were convicted of “contempt of Congress.”

The Crucible premiered on Jan. 22, 1953, in Broadway’s Martin Beck Theater. It’s now considered an American theater classic.

“I love this play,” Frederic said.