←Recommendations of John Proctor is the Villain

This is the kind of play the world needs to be moving towards. It abandons cliché for nuance, filler for poetry, and despair for a realist hope. Belflower perfectly merges natural dialogue with rich characterizations, creating a stunning and gripping drama, all while presenting nine brilliantly relatable characters. Considering the subject, I hope it's not too ironic to say I hope this play swiftly joins the canon.

Belflower's play is a high school drama which excellently describes the familiar manner in which woman is still pitted against woman in American society, a society still haunted by its Puritanic roots, for the continued domination by men. The cracks are beginning to show, though the light shining through them remains dim. This is a hopeful story, but also realistic. There's so much work left to be done.

This script is tense, taut, humorous, dramatic, powerful, poetic, and devstating, and high schools everywhere should be producing this. Highly recommended!

How did she write this play so fast? It is so of our moment and so well-built. I used to teach high school English, and hated teaching The Crucible -- wish I'd had this play to teach instead.

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.

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.