EMBER LANUTI —Last Thursday, the two Abigails (Anne-Marie MacIntosh and I) went to see the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller at Studio 58. The play is so well written; the actors and audience can’t help but feel the intensity in the words. However, I couldn’t refrain from comparing it to the opera. Robert Ward, the composer of the opera The Crucible, perfected the expression of the text by creating themes to match each character. For example, every time Thomas Putnam (Aaron Durand / Alan Macdonald) speaks, he is accompanied with these heavy weighted melodies that immediately make you feel like his words hit you like a sledgehammer!
For me, the music informs the actors and the audience so much more of the under lying current than just a spoken word. So much so, that in our last staging rehearsal for the “court scene” every second I was on stage, I noticed my body standing stronger and taller in defiance of John Proctor (Richard Petroski/Jose Ramirez Anton) and Judge Danforth (Brian Lee / Russell Robson). Every cell in my body felt energized and I felt the anger that John thought he could get away with “telling the truth.”
This journey is challenging, yet exhilarating. I’m so proud to be part of this production. Being Abigail Williams is completely different than anything I’ve ever done before. It requires an immense amount of concentration and discipline to keep your head in the game, so to speak. At the end of every rehearsal, my body feels drained like I had just run a marathon. She is an angry girl because has experienced a lot of ugliness in her young age —everything she does is to be John Proctor’s new wife and to hear him say, “I loves you”. It’s gut-wrenching to rehearse this everyday because I have to go through the whole journey of hoping, plotting and working so he will come back to me….but never does.
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