http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEv4FlmHbYY

Notes:
-In exodus, 22:18 "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."
- 1482 "Malleus Maleficarum"or "The Hammer of the Witches"; guidebook for finding witches.
           -Explained that witches have added teats that are used to fed evil souls.
           -"Swimming a witch"; seeing if she sank or floated. Water was pure so it would repel witches.
           - Encourages torture.
1629- Puritans given New England territory to start their own government. "Going to the end of the known word and starting a community out of nothing was better" than living under English tyranny.
-"Memorable Providences"
-"Spectral Evidence"; specters that were seen by the person making the accusation were admissable as evidence.
-Tituba's confession was a 3 day confession that contained tales about flying on brooms, talking animals, and spectral visits that intended to harm the children.
-The young girls were suddenly in a position of power. For once, the young girls spoke, and the old men listened. They were famous in their time, and it was unprecedented.
-Sarah Good cursed Judge Nicholas Noise as she was lead ot her death, "if you take away my life God will give you blood to drink" 25 years later, as he lay dying, he choked on his own blood.
-George Buroughs was about to be hanged; he recited the Lord's Prayer perfectly, which was supposed to be impossible for a witch to do.
-In 1702, John Hale published a modst inquest into the trials and offers an apology. "We walked in clouds and could not see our way".
- 1957, the guilty verdict on the final 9 "witches" was finally reversed.
-Conviction of being a witch also means that all of your property was forfeited to the common wealth.
-"Innocent until proven guilty" not written until after the Salem Witch trials.



 Bohemian ; camp ground where modern people of power go and supposedly reenact satanic rituals

Show posters:
  

Reheasal 1!

Immediately the rehearsal environment was very different from my previous productions. I think everyone is feeling the pressure of the challenges this production is setting before us, or maybe thats just me… Jason wanted everyone to first introduce themselves, their role or position, and what they wanted to gain from the experience, or how they wanted to grow. I loved that he took the time to really make everyone consider it, because I know that up until that point I hadn't really thought about that question. I felt a little on the spot and answered that I wanted to tap into visceral and true emotions in the performance and grow a closer relationship with the character. But I would also like to do a lot more than that; I'd hope that I take this opportunity to become an example, as an upperclassman (who's worked with a variety of different IUP students over the past 3 1/2 years) who understands the level of professional and artistic dedication thats demanded of company members. This also means I really hope to volunteer my time backstage; in my costume shop hours and hopefully elsewhere. 

At the meeting we started out with a couple games to "dip our toes in" the psycho-physical condition the characters are in. The first was a game of walking-tag, but the optional tag-ee could "accuse" someone else across the room, and they would become it. The second was called "assassin" where one person was picked at random to be the killer, and would kill his victims by winking at them. (Casey was the killer; damn him!). Both engaged our senses of suspicion, planning and conniving, and group paranoia. 

(The Trial of George Jacobs)

We broke, (to group grumbling about coming back 15 minutes early from a half an hour break). Returned and went over design presentations. I really hope the visual metaphors are as emphasized through the set as Brian's drawings portray, particularly in the looming forest motif. One of the copies I had of the Crucible included background info in the stage directions and it made note of the wilderness expanding out endlessly to their west; the only place where there were not Christians. Brian remarked that that image had bring an inspiration. 

And finally we came to the read through. The language did in fact prove an obstacle, especially because of the fact that it was a first read through. I worked wanted  to see what level of communication I could achieve with everyone I interacted with. Emily and I were able to play off each other a little bit, I know she's done a fair amount of prep work and taken a lot of time with the script, so that was a positive. Im anticipating the journey that Kayla and I will have to take over this process to build some trust and understanding. I want the Proctor scenes to feel safe, so that the reconciliation at the end can be fully expressed and stand out against the horror of the judges and the ministers that send Proctor to hang.

So I'm meeting with Jason tomorrow to have a character conference before break to figure out what kind of research I should be doing, and to set a timeline. 'm not expecting to go to festival (unless I decide to help out with Bug), so I should have good time to get off book.

"So she flies, eh? Where are her wings?"

So this is the first blog entry (first blog, too), functioning as my senior project. So in working towards the completion of that project I have to answer the following question:
“How do you expect this experience will call on your talents, and what are the greatest challenges you face?”
             John Proctor is a particularly demanding role, both technically, emotionally, and psychologically. First off; memorization of the lines is fairly daunting on its own, but the real challenge in dealing with them is the syntax and grammer. The language reflects how colonial American's spoke. Its particularly formal yet economical in its word usage. Dealing with that level of formality seems to be making difficult to relax into the character and the speech.
             Now, "getting into character" is by far the most daunting task ahead of me. I really want to achieve a highly invested and viscerally felt performance. Recently I've been aiming towards a simpler technicality in performance by trying to bring more of myself to my roles, rather than trying to layer on added levels of characterization. I hope to gain an understanding of John Proctor and build a closer relationship to him than I have my previous characters.
                I also want to make sure that the performance is honest, with as little artifice as possible. I'm worried that the show as a whole could end up very heavy and too much for an audience to sit through. I don't want to feel the restlessness of an audience dealing with artificial intensity scene after scene.
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