Blurb text.
The action in The Good John Proctor takes place entirely in the private world of children, who work, play, and sleep inside the restrictive bounds of 17th-century Puritan life. The premodern darkness that surrounds them is full of witchcraft: menace and possibility.
This production drew on a wide body of research, from timber-framed colonial-era architecture to the rope sculptures of Eva Hesse and the watercolor studies of Andrew Wyeth. The design elements worked to evoke in space the creature comforts and pervasive fear that characterized home and The Woods beyond it. Creating a rich, three-dimensional darkness that was more tangible presence than visual effect.
"The girls talk a lot about going into 'The Woods,' a source of forbidden knowledge, and there are certainly creepy scenes, lit by a single lantern, of them crawling through underbrush. They think they’re inching toward something dangerous, but we know that the lasting harm has already been done."
Helen Shaw, The New Yorker