Drama Journal, The Crucible.

The scene that Jeff and I are working on from The Crucible is the final scene between Elizabeth and John Proctor. It is a very dramatic scene full of subtext. John Proctor has been in jail for three months and has not seen his pregnant wife Elizabeth. John has been put in jail in because of the witch trials going on in Salem. Elizabeth was also suspected of witchcraft but as she is pregnant will not be tried at least until the child is born. Prior to the witch trials John had committed adultery and Elizabeth had found out, as you can imagine this created all kinds of conflict between husband and wife.  These circumstances, along with the fact that John will probably be hanged shortly, cause a lot of tension in the scene and add a lot of subtext. When performing it is important to thoroughly examine subtext in order to fully portray the character and their emotions at that given time. Without putting thought into what the character really means behind their words, the scene is flat and unbelievable. To help us with this, we looked at Objectives and Super Objectives. Determining that Elizabeth's Super Objective was to reconcile her love with her husband and proctors was to gain his wife's forgiveness, whereas their objectives change multiple times throughout the scene, from concern for the children, to each other and their community. So far our scene is coming along nicely, however we do plan to meet at lunches to work a bit more on getting the full emotions out of the text.