Opening on an eerie night with all of the women cast members performing a tribal dance in the woods and drinking blood, the director of the USC School of Dramatic Arts’ production of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” said almost no other productions choose to show the women dancing.

“When I had shared with them on the first day of rehearsal that that’s actually how we’re going to start the story with that ritual in the woods, everybody was so excited,” director Anita Dashiell-Sparks said. “[We really wanted] to prioritize and center the role that Tituba actually holds and plays in the narrative.”

John Proctor first said, “I have given you my soul; leave me my name,” over 70 years ago. This weekend, “The Crucible” hit the stage at the Bing Theatre. The over three-hour-long show follows John Proctor (Aaron Eichenlaub), a farmer in Salem, Massachusetts, and Abigail Williams (Nash Rahman), a young servant and arguably the play’s villain, during partially fictionalized accounts of the Salem witch trials in 1692.

Tituba (Kaylee Bennett), a slave and the first woman to be accused of witchcraft, leads the girls of Salem in this dance in the woods. In the SDA production, Dashiell-Sparks incorporated elements of African dance into the scene, emphasizing Tituba’s Bajan culture. 

“Having that type of ritual and ceremony [was an] ecstatic experience, and doing African dance, and I have a djembe I get to drum,” said Kaylee Bennett, who played Tituba. “In the ensemble, a lot of us speak multiple languages. … I think that’s really cool how we’ve brought that in.”  

Dashiell-Sparks said the decision to highlight Tituba’s culture front and center was to show that life in 1692 Salem went beyond white Puritanism, even if it was in secret.

“It was a form of liberation and female empowerment, and it also was a form of resistance and rebellion against the predominant systems and structures at the time,” Dashiell-Sparks said.

Beyond the production’s use of rituals and movement, the story centers on the personal conflicts among those who live in Salem. 

“Through the testimonies, you definitely see the individual characters’ [relationships] … but also their individual motivations and agenda,” Dashiell-Sparks said.

Lara Botha, who played servant Mary Warren, said the play’s central thesis is “how mass hysteria is a vehicle through which power grabs can take place.” 

Bennett said the play’s themes are still relevant today. When people are killed, people often try to find reasons why and what they might have done wrong, she said. At the end of the play, this idea was emphasized by news sound bites playing over the speakers, including audio mentioning United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

This all comes to a head in the show when, by the end, Abigail, Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth (Jayden Adams-Ruíz) and Warren have all turned against the truth in some way, specifically when the pressure of the court and Salem society has become too overwhelming. 

The court scene comes at the culmination of the show, where it is being decided if Proctor and others should be put to death for witchcraft.

“[The court scene was] just a collision,” Dashiell-Sparks said. “We see the whole world order just fracture and fall apart.” 

The set design, which was covered in trees and wooden furniture accurate to the time of the play, also interacted with the characters.

“There is this whole motif of trees, and it feels representative of the forest, but it also creates this feeling of being watched,” Botha said. 

The final scene brought the production’s main themes of reputation, guilt and duty together. The weight of Proctor’s decision is heavy, with a montage of sorts happening in the background of other characters’ deaths at the hands of the court.

“This is the consequence of what happens when things spiral out of control, and everybody turns on everybody,” Dashiell-Sparks said. “That was the intent behind it, with bearing witness to it when he is hanged.” 

At the end of the show, bright lights were brought on stage and flashed into the audience. According to Dashiell-Sparks, the decision to shine the lights on the audience was representative of one of the central ideas of the play: cycles of violence and division.

“[It was about] having to reflect on how we arrived here, and what we are going to do about it moving forward,” Dashiell-Sparks said.

Disclaimer: Kaylee Bennett formerly served as Rhythm & News Podcast Editor at the Daily Trojan in Spring 2025. Bennett is no longer affiliated with this paper.