The Crucible (Cancelled)

The Crucible... The performance I wish happened. The Crucible was going to be my first fully fledged 2 hour performance with an interval in-between dealing with incredibly powerful scenes and character connections. Unfortunately, the performance was cancelled as during this time, Covid had just made it's first appearance however, our class did block and rehearse the majority of the play.

I played the lead character John Proctor, which was decided through read through auditions of the character that the Director asked for, luckily I was one of those people. As mentioned, although the performance was cancelled, I still learned a lot through the process. For the first time, I was going to be doing a live performance in the round. This proved to be extremely challenging as at the time I was only used to paying attention to my own placement, let alone other actors. As actors we had to make sure there wasn't too many of us turned from a specific section of the audience, which resulted in a lot of changes throughout the rehearsal process.

During the time of this performance I was in my HNC however, I had already visited the role of John Proctor for small assessment scene purposes. I had already taken a look into the character because of that, but that was as an NC performer, whereas at this time I was a HNC performer. I knew I had to take this role further than what I did back in my NC.

I first took a delve into Richard Armitage's performance of John Proctor and extensively watched and analysed The Crucible. As I previously mentioned, this was my first 2 hour performance. Performances that I had done before that, were either 2 hours and I had short appearances, or just weren't 2 hours long. Because this performance was 2 hours, I was given the opportunity to expand on a character journey of a much larger scale. John was no Hero, he was no Villain, he was just but a Man forced into a situation he didn't want to be apart of. I could relate to him a lot, his rage, his passion. There was a certain point during rehearsals were I felt so involved that for the first time it felt like I wasn't Harrison playing John Proctor, I just was John Proctor.

This performance although it didn't happen will stay in my heart. I hope some day I can come back to John and finish what I started.