Inspired by Y2K hit tunes and a 70-year-old drama, a Georgia playwright and college lecturer is enticing teenagers to Broadway with John Proctor is the Villain.
On a soggy May Tuesday in Manhattan, theatergoers were scuttling along Schubert Alley with excitement in the air before the evening performance of John Proctor is the Villain at the Booth Theatre.
The play, written by White County native and Emory University professor Kimberly Belflower, became well-known for giving Arthur Miller’s allegorical 1953 masterpiece The Crucible a Me Too twist.
Although Miller’s main character Proctor does not appear in Belflower’s play, her account of a group of high school kids in North Georgia in 2017 who are coping with trauma and concerns about their teacher is informed by The Crucible’s framing of a witch hunt.
What if both are possible? Earlier this month, Belflower, who turns 38 on June 22, requested in a video chat with GPB from New York.
What happens if more than one item is true at once? What if John Proctor in The Crucible is extremely misogynistic and nasty to the other ladies in the play, while simultaneously taking very moral and necessary steps against lies? Additionally, Mr. Smith, the teacher character in my play, is an excellent educator. Over the years, he has had a good influence on many of his pupils’ lives. He is also a predator.
A celebration of girlhood
In Danya Taymor’s John Proctor is the Villain, 22-year-old Sadie Sink, who starred in the Atlanta-shot Netflix series Stranger Things, plays a student who returns to school following an unexplained absence and a haze of whispers. The play’s fictional depiction of power dynamics and sexual assault has energized conversations about how young women absorb their experiences, despite the fact that it got seven Tony nominations but did not win any trophies at the June 8 awards ceremony.
On the red carpet on the play’s opening night, Sink told reporters, “I think it’s really powerful to see all of these characters that you can relate to and you can kind of pick out who represents you most.” And simply the message in general. It’s all a true celebration of being a girl.On April 14, 2025, the Broadway production of John Proctor is the Villain opens, drawing large crowds. (Attributed to John Proctor, the villain.)
One of the main reasons the play appeals to teenagers and their parents is the sound design used before, during, and after the performance. Families were chatting loudly at their seats during the May performance while listening to a pre-show mix of 2010s hits. When Robyn’s Dancing on My Own got loud, there was a multigenerational sing-along.
However, the musical John Proctor is the Villain does not exist. Belflower claimed that although the recorded music relates to the play’s emotions, the dialogue—which was influenced by what she heard in her own high school while growing up in White County, Georgia—is the true meat. She gave her characters Southernisms as a result, although she took care to avoid overburdening them with preconceptions.
“I just love both of those populations of people so much that I feel like it’s not a huge effort to depict them with humanity and dignity and complexity because that’s how I see them,” she remarked when writing about Southerners and teenagers. Because that’s their nature. Then, I am always very aware of how non-Southerners interact with these characters when I am workshopping a script, and this one in particular. I would like to confirm if there is anything that I simply wasn’t aware of. as I sort of sketch out the world.
Showing up for each other
The 2017 anthem “Green Light” by New Zealand singer Lorde, in which the traumatized but just freed classmates dance wildly to pulsating lights, served as the play’s conclusion.
This scene in John Proctor is the Villain generates strong emotions about the status of the world today, particularly for women of all ages, and resonates into the pre-COVID epidemic attitude of America. Attendees leave the play feeling as though they just left hot yoga with a plan because the theater is so charged with empowering pheromones and a bouncing groove.
For me, the song embodies what it’s like to be an artist, to go through a horrible or unpleasant event, come out on the other side, and realize, “Oh, I’m going to make something out of that.” Belflower declared, “I’m going to use my suffering and make it into something positive.” And I believe that’s what my play’s characters Shelby and Rae Lynn are doing in that last scene—they’ve come to the realization that the institutions won’t be able to keep us safe. Our parents, the church, and the school did not provide us with any protection. We have to be there for each other, so to speak.
Living the dream
Belflower claimed that ever since John Proctor was cast as the villain, she has been living in a sort of dream world.
Since they had agreed in high school that they would attend the Tony Awards together if either was nominated, she wore a stunning fuchsia dress and accompanied her best buddy.
She was able to enjoy the play’s accolades over a semester-long sabbatical in New York, including a columnist’s comment that she couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks.
What comes next for the playwright who is eager to see the students who inspire her again in her home state? Fall courses in dramatic writing and theater studies are offered full-time on the Emory campus in Atlanta.
This article, which was co-published by GPB News and Now Habersham,
