Revision lesson 5 in a series, covering how to answer the written paper Component 3 in the GCSE Drama exam.

1. Y11 DRAMA
PPE REVISION LESSONS
• Approaching the PPE in January
• Revision of Section B (As You Like It by William Shakespeare)
• Revision of Section A (The Crucible by Arthur Miller)
• In depth analysis of questions with exemplar responses
• Questions for you to try at home each week as homework
• Exam timings
• All lessons posted online
• Revision Guides for additional support – HAVE YOU GOT YOURS?

2. 2 MORE REVISION LESSONS
•THIS LESSON – Revision of the Director
9 mark question
•NEXT lesson – You will be completing
your 500 words of notes and submitting
them in the lesson, so that you can
have them in the exam in January.

3. • Who is this?
• What Act is this?
• Where does this take place?
• What has just happened?
• How does this Act end?
• How would you use PHYSICAL
skills as a performer to show the
audience the characters
condition at this point?

4. • Who is this?
• When he appears in Act 2,
why is he distressed?
• What is his job?
• He is independent and
opinionated. As a Director
how would you ask your
performer to play the role
vocally and physically?

5. Useful clips from the Internet
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLpxwzlEzeE
• (Spark notes on the WHOLE PLAY)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8P0JUSLsVM&t=6s
• (The Historical context of 1950s USA and the threat of Communism)

6. Context which the play was created and first
performed: (taken from digitaltheatreplus)
When studying a play, there are three different contexts to consider:
• The context of the time when the play was written. • The context of
the time in which the play is set. • The context in which any given
production of the play takes place.
SALEM WITCH TRIALS, 1692-3
“ This play is not history in the sense in which the word is used by the
academic historian. ”
– Arthur Miller
Although the events of The Crucible are not entirely true to life, the play
is nonetheless heavily inspired by the witch trials that genuinely took
place in Salem in 1692-3.
A belief and fear of the supernatural was a part of everyday life in
15th-century England that spread when the colonisation of North
America began in 1607. By the end of the century, and the time in
which The Crucible is set, it was still widely held that Satan walked the
earth, and many believed that ghosts, demons, and, of course, witches,
were very real and dangerous threats. In fact, though the Salem witch
trials were particularly bloody, 12 people were executed for practising
witchcraft in New England between 1647 and 1692. We can see then
that although the 20 who died in Salem nearly doubled this body count
in one year, the trials were part of a long-established tradition of
rooting out supposed supernatural enemies.
Salem was known at the time for its argumentative population; historical
records tell us that many of the village and town’s inhabitants were
parties in disputes over land, property, farming rights, and church
privileges. We also know that the first three women accused of witchcraft
in Miller’s play were also the first three women to be so accused in reality:
the black or Indian slave Tituba, the homeless beggar Sarah Good and the
remarried Sarah Osborne, who was by all accounts rarely seen at church.
When Abigail Williams and Betty Parris – who in reality were 11 and nine
years old, respectively – began to act strangely, the fact that Tituba, Good
and Osborne were the women at whom fingers were pointed may be a
coincidence. It may also be that their anti-Puritan lives grated with the
many strictly religious figures in Salem, and the witch trials provided a
convenient way to purge them from society – it is hard to know.
The main hearings on which Miller’s play is based took place between
June and September of 1692; in this period more than 30 people were
indicted, and most of them executed. It was during this period that the
real-life Giles Corey did in fact refuse to plead either guilty or innocent to
his charges, and was pressed to death.
In 1693, a new trial was less successful, when the witch-hunt appeared to
lose the support of the Governor of Massachusetts, William Phipps, who
pardoned the three women found guilty of witchcraft, saving their lives. In
the wake of this pardon, fewer and fewer accused witches were brought
before the court, and those that were, were found not to be guilty. By the
end of May 1693, the bloody episode was finally concluded.

7. In his Narratives of the Witchcraft
Cases (1914), author George Lincoln
Burr writes:
“ More than once it has been said,
too, that the Salem witchcraft was
the rock on which the theocracy
shattered .”
– Burr, pp. 197
Q In what ways has Miller
changed or shaped the real-life
narrative of the Salem witch
trials? Why do you think this
might be?
Q Think of other plays, books,
or films with historical settings.
What is the impact on modern
audiences/readers of setting a
work of art in the past?
Q “History has a way of
repeating itself.” Discuss with
reference to the Salem witch
trials of 1692-3.

8. 1950s context
1950s MCCARTHYISM
“ One of a handful of great plays that will both survive
the 20 th century and bear witness to it. ”
– John Peter, The Sunday Times
Today, the term “McCarthyism” is used to broadly refer to the
practice of making unsubstantiated claims against someone
for charges of treason or subversive behaviour, but for Arthur
Miller, writing The Crucible in the early 1950s, it would have
had a very specific meaning. Republican senator Joseph
McCarthy was an American politician who has gone down in
history for having publicly fuelled fears of widespread
Communist subversion during a period known as the Cold
War.
During this time, tensions were high between the United
States and the Soviet Union. The United States operated, and
still does today, on the basis of an economic system called
capitalism. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union – a huge state made
up of multiple Eastern European republics and Russia – was
governed by the Communist party. The two superpowers held
radically different views about how countries should be run,
and each feared the other; many were worried that nuclear
war might break out between them.
• McCarthy catapulted himself to international fame when he gave
a speech in February 1950 in which he claimed to possess a list
of names of “ members of the Communist party and members of
a spy ring ” working in US government. It is clear now that
McCarthy possessed no such list, but that didn’t stop public
panic. Before long, various government institutions were being
tasked with the identification of Communists with a view to
removing them from positions of influence – if the link between
Miller’s play and these events is not yet clear, perhaps it helps to
learn that many at the time referred to this frenzy of persecution
as a “Communist witch hunt”.
Many private citizens were called to testify to this
committee on the basis of their influence on public life,
which meant that writers, actors, directors and other
individuals working in the creative industries were under
scrutiny.
Miller’s friends were among those brought before the
committee, and some of them named one another as
members of the Communist Party; an accusation which
mostly led to being blacklisted from Hollywood, fined or
even imprisoned. As coincidence would have it, it was
around this time that Miller read Marion Lena Starkey’s
book, The Devil in Massachusetts (1949), which concerned
itself with the 1692 witch trials in Salem and contained
verbatim transcriptions of documents from the time. Slowly,
Miller began to realise how powerful the connection
between the events of the 17th century and his own time
might be:

9. Miller himself was called before the House
Committee on Un-American Activities, in
1956, where he refused to testify, saying “ I
could not use the name of another person
and bring trouble to him ”.
For his integrity, Miller was found guilty of
contempt of Congress, sentenced either to
30 days in prison or a $500 fine, blacklisted,
and had his passport confiscated.
Senator McCarthy was largely discredited
by 1954, and died in 1957, but the House
Committee remained active until 1975, and
the Cold War – in various shapes and forms
– lasted until 1991. It is easy to think of
events that occurred in the 1950s as being
long gone, but the repercussions can still be
felt today.
• Q Although on the surface a historical
play, the first audiences of the Crucible
would have recognised that it was also
Miller’s way of writing about the
Communist witch-hunt. What modern
events might the topic of the play
resonate with today?
• Q “If 1690s Salem is a stand-in for 1950s
Washington, then John Proctor is a
stand-in for Arthur Miller.” Discuss.
• Q Why might Miller have chosen to deal
with McCarthyism by writing about the
witch trials rather than simply writing a
play about McCarthyism?

10. B There are specific choices in this extract for a
director.
9 mark example – design elements
• (i) As a director, discuss how you
would use one of the production
elements below to bring this extract
to life for your audience.
• You should make reference to the
context in which the text was created
and performed. Choose one of the
following:
• costume
• staging
• props/stage furniture. (9 marks)
12 mark example – performance skills
• (ii) Danforth is the character with the
highest status in the play as a whole.
As a director, discuss how the
performer playing this role might
demonstrate high status to the
audience in this extract and the
complete play.
• You must consider:
• voice
• physicality
• stage directions and stage space. (12
marks)

11. Detailed look at the question
• (i) As a director, discuss how you
would use one of the production
elements below to bring this extract
to life for your audience.
• You should make reference to the
context in which the text was created
and performed. Choose one of the
following:
• costume
• staging
• props/stage furniture. (9 marks)
• The response requires detail about
how you would use one design
element to bring the extract to life.
• You need to know
• Where each Act is set
• What was typical of the Salem
community in 1692 – how they
dressed, what materials they had to
use to build with or tools to use, and
the roles men and women had in
society.
• What different groups of people
appear in the play?

12. Essential knowledge
• Groups of characters:
• Judges – Danforth/Hathorne
• Ministers – Parris/Hale
• Landowners – Proctor/Putnam/Corey
• Adult Women – Elizabeth/Rebecca
• Girls –
Abigail/Mary/Susanna/Mercy/Betty
• Discredited/non-Puritans – Sarah
Good/Sarah Osborne
• Slaves - Tituba
• Location of Acts:
• 1 – A room in Parris’ house
• 2 – The Proctor’s house
• 3 – The Court
• 4 – A Jail

13. (i) As a director, discuss how you would use one of the production elements below to bring this extract to life for your audience.
You should make reference to the context in which the text was created and performed. Choose one of the following:
• costume
• staging
• props/stage furniture. (9 marks) These could be different (Lighting, Sound, Staging)
Extract is ACT
ONE
I would choose Costume
because there are many
characters from different
groups in the Act, ranging
from Tituba to Reverend
Hale, also Abigail and
John, and Betty.
I now need THREE examples of how costume
would bring the extract to life, each
containing DETAIL and TECHNICAL
VOCABULARY as well as reference to the
CONTEXT
Extract is ACT
TWO
I would choose
Props/Stage Furniture.
The location of the
Proctors house could if
staged in a naturalistic
way, be packed with
examples of this
element, revealing their
lifestyle and the times in
which they lived.
3 Examples here could be?
• Table and chairs
• Fireplace and cooking utensils
• John’s gun, and whip
• The Rabbit stew mentioned
• An oil lamp – it is getting dark
• Cider and cups
• A wash bowl for John to wash
• The Poppet given to Elizabeth, containing a
needle
• A rope to bind Elizabeth’s hands
Contextual link – Authority
figures are made clear by
their smart clothing, the
poorest and weakest are
subjected to prejudice and
accusations, as in the
1950s
Contextual link - The
protagonist John is shown
as an ordinary working
man, linked to nature and
the earth that he works on.
This highlights the theme
of a struggle of the
individual against the
system