←Recommendations of John Proctor is the Villain

I don't think I have the words to describe how brilliant this play is. I laughed, I cried, I took a twenty-minute-walk to think about a particularly fantastic line. You'll rethink the Crucible. You'll rethink your teachers and the girls you gossiped about in high school. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Kimberly Belflower, for this masterpiece.

I had the pleasure of seeing an incredible reading of John Proctor is the Villian at Ojai Playwrights Conference this year and I cannot implore you enough, dear review reader, that this play deserves a full-production. And SOON. It has been said so eloquently by so many other reviews below, how Kimberly dismantles stereotypes and gives power to young women through this play. But more than that, it reminds you of a special kind of magic that happens in the best kind of theatrical spaces. I don't want to spoil it, so just give it a read and a love.

Thank you, Kimberly Belflower, for this play. I knew these girls (heck, I WAS one of them, and I was uncomfortably aware in reading this just which one I was). I knew these boys, and reading this also made me very aware (again, uncomfortably so) that I may, indeed, have known this teacher.

Like so many I adored The Crucible when I read it in high school, but when it came time to advocate for it for our theater company's past season I found myself unable to do so, and actually fighting against it. This play beautifully spells out why.

This play will stick with you--A portrayal of high school girls that refuses to condescend, that allows them validity in their interpretations of a much-revered text just feels so welcome and needed right now. It calls us to look at everything differently--Arthur Miller, our fathers, our boyfriends-since-we-were-ten, our teachers, and our friendships. It's a powerful, funny and painful piece of playwriting.

This play brilliantly unpacks hundreds of years of language that shames, blames and destroys young vulnerable girls who have been sexually and romantically exploited by powerful men (and they often do come as a package deal). Watching young women learn how to resist these narratives, band together, turn their male classmates from bystanders into allies or at least potential ones, and educate each other is hopeful, powerful and so heartbreakingly real. This play is the play we need right now. Young people are gonna save us. The future is inclusive! Produce this play. Every teenager needs to see it.

Anyone interested in producing The Crucible should read this play.

Earlier this year I saw an excellent production of The Crucible and spent the night Googling it alongside #MeToo. So of course this play intrigued me, but I worried, is this going to be a gimmick… Well, it’s no gimmick. The characters feel real and are unfailingly given time to breathe, bond, explore, interact, even be flawed, not just trot out prepackaged political positions. Works as a companion piece to The Crucible but doesn't require the audience to know it chapter-and-verse. All this and, for extra literary fun, a shoutout to my favorite Walt Whitman line.

Hearing about "witch hunts" during the height of the #MeToo movement got me furious. And now Kimberly Belflower has taken that notion and turned it on its head using an ensemble of deeply individual, deeply flawed, deeply wonderful teenage girls. Filled with theatrical echoes to The Crucible (and its extremely patriarchal facets), this play for all its harrowing moments is ultimately one of hope. It is about young women growing and fighting for themselves. It's stunning.

Kimberly Belflower has created a profound, funny, and provocative play. I'm convinced this play will help us get to that "New World."

Belflower's play explores friendship, inherent trust in authority figures (esp as a young person), what to do when someone we love does the Worst thing, sex ed in schools. The dialogue is quick and natural, the conflict subtle but unnerving. As an avid fan of The Crucible, I was totally taken in by my teachers' insistence that John Proctor is the Hero and loved to see this exploration of the power of women both in Miller's and Belflower's pieces.