Interview: John Proctor Is the Villain Playwright Kimberly Belflower Explains Inspiration for #MeToo-Set Tale

Kimberly Belflower had just wrapped up her MFA in playwriting, and for pleasure, decided to devour The Witches: Suspicion, Betrayal, and Hysteria in 1692 Salem by Stacy Schiff. The nonfiction hit gave context to the Salem witch trials, and, as Belflower soon discovered, also enumerated on lesser-known facets, like the fact there was rampant sexual assault in the community, and the accusers were suffering from severe PTSD and isolation.

“I was just so struck by the reality of these girls’ lives,” Belflower recalled. “And then that fall is when the first tidal wave of #MeToo crashed. And like a lot of women, I just became super consumed by the coverage; every new allegation, I was just relentlessly reading everything. I think that fixation was making me look back on my own adolescence with a new vocabulary and a new lens.

“Then Woody Allen, in an interview, called #MeToo a ‘witch hunt.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, how interesting. I just read this book. I should reread The Crucible, because that’s the most famous work of art about witch hunts.’ Rereading The Crucible with the lens of #MeToo so directly on my eyes really blew my brain open. I was like, ‘Oh, this is not what I remember.’”

Thus began Belflower’s journey to John Proctor Is the Villain, the Tony-nominated new play directed by Danya Taymor and starring Sadie Sink. It takes place in a rural Georgia high school at the dawn of the #MeToo movement, with a group of students reading Arthur Miller’s famous work for the first time, as real-life bombshells keep infiltrating the classroom. The show is a sharp, funny, enraging work that is capturing rabid fans, especially young ones.

“I had just turned 30, and it felt like I didn’t recognize the world around me,” Belflower said of 2017. “What would it be like to be 16 years old in this moment, and to feel the entire world start to shift the way it talks about certain things? And while you’re becoming yourself and starting to name and experience things for the first time on your own? That was the swirling stew around the impetus.”

The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

It’s interesting that you imagined being a teenager at that time. Were there acutal teenagers you spoke with during the play’s development?
Totally. I got a commission for this program called the College Collaboration Project. The purpose of the program is to get colleges and universities to co-commission an early career playwright to develop a play with their students. It was the perfect intersection of idea and opportunity. I was able to interview college students as I was developing a play. I came in with a very strong idea of what I was after, but for a lot of the details, I wanted to be like, “Okay, is this just me?” They were college students, not high school students, but that was a big resource.

Also, I’m an educator. I teach college in Atlanta. I remember there was a day when one of my students came in wearing a Twilight [shirt] and I was like, “Okay, good.” I wanted to make this Twilight reference [but didn’t know if that was dated]. The cool thing about the internet is that everything old is new again.

I had a similar experience to you. When the news started dropping in 2017, I was reading it all day, every day. For so many people, it felt like we were on the precipice of this big change. Now we’re several years past that, and in many ways, it feels like we’re in a backlash. Did anything change in what you were looking to accomplish as the way people thought about the #MeToo movement changed?
I think we had a lot of really rich discussions around that during this process. I started writing this play during the first Trump administration, and now here we are. I echo feeling hopeful at the beginning of the major #MeToo moment that it was going to change certain systems and the way that power operates. And I don’t think that has happened.

But what I think has happened, and what I think we talked a lot about in the play, is that okay, these systems aren’t going to save us, but we can save each other. Or, if not save each other, be with each other through the fire. We can perform acts of rebellion that change things internally. It might not change a lot externally, but that still matters.

Do you think that this is a fundamentally hopeful play? [Note: Vague spoilers follow]
I think it depends on the day! Today, I’m going to say, yes, I think it is because of what we just talked about. The last stage directions of the play is, “Is she going to dance? She might. She just might.” I think it changes something for everybody in that room. Even if your abuser is still in power, you can stand [strong]. The play ends with Shelby [Sadie Sink] expelling, purging this thing, and physically being so in her body in this way that she hasn’t been allowed to for so long. I do think that is ultimately hopeful.

The guidance counselor character, Miss Gallagher, was so interesting because she also undergoes a transformation throughout the show, but it’s different than the one the girls go through. As someone who spends a lot of time with college students, how did you experience the difference between millennial and Gen Z feminism, and was that something you wanted to explore through that character?
I don’t know if I consciously thought about those two generations as much as I thought about how she’s just eight years older than these girls and is in this position of power over them, but also feels very powerless in her own career and life.

I look back on my own life. I was a nanny in my twenties. I was taking care of children, and I had no idea how to take care of myself. Looking back on my own high school teachers, I’m like, “Oh my God, that one was right out of college, that’s crazy.” I [was thinking about] the weight and the power and the powerlessness, and then also knowing that sometimes realizations happen in different moments for different people.

I think a way in which we minimize teenagers is by [saying] they were becoming who they’re going to be, versus they already are. They might be changing and becoming something new but coming of age doesn’t just stop when we turn 18, you know? I see someone like Miss Gallagher still coming into who she is and making this huge shift.

What does Sadie Sink bring to the role of Shelby?
I think Sadie’s incredible on so many levels. She has the most expressive face. Sadie has grown up in the public eye. I think as a necessity, she has built up certain defenses, and Shelby has done the same thing for very different reasons.

Sadie is so fucking smart, and quick, and the way Shelby’s brain works so fast. There are several moments in the play where it’s clear that as she’s saying one thing, she’s thought of five others, and is working to catch up with her brain. Sadie gets that.

We’ve not seen beginning of what she can do. This is a hard role. It’s a hard play. And the fact that she’s the one that’s like, “I want to do this,” just speaks so much to her sensibility and her sense of self. I think she’s amazing.