Persuasive Speech for the Inclusion of The Crucible in...

The Crucible Persuasive Speech Greetings to you all; thank you all for taking the time to hear my arguments and for considering my suggestion for the inclusion of The Crucible in the 2013 play season of the Queensland Theatre Company. My understanding is that the companys intent is to pursue the culture of fear as the overarching theme for this years selection of plays. This is an ideal theme because we are, unfortunately, living in a time of great fear and distrust, with good reason considering the rates of crime and international violence. Arthur Millers The Crucible is an ideal work to complement the theme of this years play cycle. Although set in the time of the 1692 Salem witch trials during the colonial period, the play was intentionally written by Miller as an allegorical work used to represent the dangers of McCarthyism in the United States in the 1950s. Miller himself said, It was not only the rise of McCarthyism that moved me, but something which seemed much more weird and mysterious. It was the fact tha t a political, objective, knowledgeable campaign Ã¥ ®â€°as capable of creating not only of terror, but a new subjective reality, a veritable mystique which was gradually assuming even a holy resonance (Lavanture 2007). Its message of the dangers of fanaticism and the horrendous acts human beings can perpetrate upon each other in the name of fear, particularly when that terror is backed up by the government and system of justice, is a universal one which still