Schools

Video: 'The Crucible' Begins Playing at San Ramon Valley High Tonight

Take a look at the trailer for 'The Crucible,' which beings playing tonight at San Ramon Valley High.

San Ramon Valley High's theater arts program will being its performance of "The Crucible" on campus tonight at 7 p.m.

Shows at 7 p.m. are also scheduled for Friday, Saturday, Feb. 28, March 1 and March 2.

Director Rob Seitelman wrote the following about his original version of "The Crucible":

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Following Brighton Beach Memoirs, an exercise in what might best be called theatrical realism, a show that theatrically depicts locales and situations with which an audience has some familiarity and relation, I wanted go to a complete opposite extreme, and hence our production of Crucible.

I wanted to utilize a text that most audience members would have some familiarity with, both because of its place in the SRVHS curriculum and its recent production at Dougherty Valley and Carondelet. From there, I set about to create a theatrical playground where the entire cast would join together communally to tell a story important to them.

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Their Crucible is a story of secrecy, deceit, broken promises and rebuilding. It is a story of movement and direction. Ultimately, it is a story of hope that moves them forward into the world as young adults to create a society where events such as those depicted in the Crucible cannot happen. It is an idealistic hope, but it is upon such beliefs that the world changes.

So this is a non-traditional production. The sets are sparse, the lighting is non-realistic, the sound is non-diagetic. In such a production, the audience is not meant to be transported to Salem in 1692, it is meant to stay firmly in Danville in 2013 and hear a story as if sitting around a campfire.

In a traditional play, catharsis occurs, and the audience, having suspended disbelief, leaves the theatre satisfied. In this play, catharsis will not occur, in the hopes that you will listen to the words of Crucible with fresh ears, watch with fresh eyes, and go out into the night and change the world.


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