On November 18, I participated in a staged reading of two unpublished plays by William Carlos Williams, directed by Chelsea Regan. These plays were Betty Putnam, written first, but performed second, and Tituba’s Children. These plays deal with the Salem witch trials and cover similar ground to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, but they were written earlier.
Tituba’s Children begins with Giles Cory and Tituba on trial. Near the end of the play, the scene changes and half of the cast sheds their Puritan clothing to show modern dress. All of a sudden, the scene shifts to show people on trial for being communists during the “Red Scare.” Through this use of allegory, Williams shows that the creation of the “other,” an out-group that is ostracized, is a natural human instinct that shows itself throughout history.
In Betty Putnam, which he wrote first, he shows a very different opinion. He writes of a young girl who is threatened to be hung as a witch because she would not yield and marry a man as a plan that would mean her land would be taken from her to pay another man’s debt. In this play, he shows that the threat of witchcraft was used as a means to get what one wants. This is a very different view from in Tituba’s Children where witchcraft is seen as a very real threat. The fact that both plays show a different view on the same issue shows that William Carlos Williams had a change in thought over the years between when he wrote these plays. This is something that was discussed in the talk-back after the performance. Besides this, we talked about themes that showed up in the plays that ranged from the creation of the other to the reason why it is an often-used allegory to compare the Salem witch trials to the communism scare.
We, the cast, were joined by students in a class about witches, and some others who wished to watch the read-through of some great plays that have not seen the light of day for many years, probably since they were written. Being able to play Betty Putnam and Tituba allowed me to have a view into a time I personally have not thought about for years, a time period that has much significance in our nation’s history.