“John Proctor is the Villain” Reframes Literary, Historical Assumptions

Arthur Miller penned “The Crucible” in 1953 as a powerful critique of contemporary fears, injustices and scapegoating.

Specifically, Miller wrote the play as a very transparent criticism of the McCarthyism that was in full force in the early ‘50s. The play, set during the 17th-century “Witch Trials” in Salem, Mass., was a very thinly veiled allegory, a push to pull lessons from the past about the social wrongs of the present. While it still serves as a powerful indictment of Cold War-era paranoia, the piece also suffers from its own blind spots and biases, specifically in the way it treats women.

Indeed, the characters and conflicts are highly problematic for any modern reader, especially when it comes to one of the main characters, a literary figure long esteemed as a hero of Western literature. In the play, John Proctor chooses death over a lie, opting to give his life for what he perceives as right. It’s a fate that has traditionally secured Proctor’s status as a paragon of integrity in the standard reading of the text. In the same play, however, Proctor engages in an extramarital sexual relationship with Abigail Williams, a child working in his household as a servant.

That dichotomy immediately stood out to playwright Kimberly Belflower, whose 2022 play “John Proctor is the Villain” re-examines “The Crucible” and its historical foundations in a contemporary framework. Belflower’s play, which will run in February at the Loft Theatre, takes place in a rural high school in Georgia in 2018, where a group of female students reading “The Crucible” for class challenges its hypocrisies, even as they face their own versions of the predatory behavior and double standards that make it so problematic.

The inspiration for this re-examination stemmed directly from the playwright’s re-reading of Miller’s work, and from her response to the long-assumed virtue attached to its main male character.

“I was taught, and almost every single person I know is taught, that John Proctor is this beacon of goodness and the girls are hysterical,” Belflower has said. “And rereading it, I found myself saying out loud, ‘John Proctor is the villain.’”

As the title suggests, Belflower’s drama takes a hard look at the power dynamics at play in “The Crucible.” In a small high school in a “one stoplight town,” a male teacher declares to his female students that John Proctor is one of the “greatest literary heroes” in the Western canon. That declaration takes on a sinister quality as the play progresses, and as the teacher’s own predatory behavior comes to light.

The playwright tackles this re-examination through the guise of the play’s female characters and their contemporary experiences. With modern parlance and constant references to current pop culture and music (artists like Taylor Swift, Lorde and Lizzo all figure into the action), Belflower seeks to deconstruct long-held assumptions and illuminate the overlooked figures of history, literature and contemporary society.

The CU Boulder Theatre production will look to do the same. Directed by Ph.D student Julia Anderson, who’s cited a commitment to “disrupt the narrative we as a society have created for institutional learning,” this production will cast a different light on the underpinnings of double standards, from the 17th, 20th, 21st centuries and beyond.

CU Boulder Theatre presents “John Proctor is the Villain” in the Loft Theatre Feb. 21 through 28, 2025.