Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. The new play, John Proctor is the Villain, has earned seven Tony nominations, including Best Play. This new play is directly in conversation with an old one. In small town Georgia, a group of teenagers is reading Arthur Miller's The Crucible for the first time. Their beloved teacher, Mr. Smith, is walking them through the characters and themes. The year is 2018, and the MeToo movement takes on new meaning for these teenage girls. Among those girls is Raelynn, played by Amalia Yoo. When we meet her, she's had a falling out with her best friend Shelby after Shelby messed around with her boyfriend. The thing is, Shelby hasn't been back to school in weeks, and Raelynn isn't sure what's going on until secrets begin to surface. The New York Times said that John Proctor is the Villain is urgently necessary. It's running now at the Booth Theater.

I was joined earlier this year by playwright Kimberly Belflower, by director Danya Taymor, who just won outstanding direction of a play at the Drama Desk Awards, and by actor Amalia Yoo, who plays Raelynn. She recently took home an award for outstanding featured performance in a play at the Drama Desk Awards. I began our conversation by asking Kimberly why she wanted to write about The Crucible.

Kimberly Belflower: I reread The Crucible in 2017 in the wake of the MeToo movement after Woody Allen called MeToo a witch hunt in an interview. I went back and read it and was just really struck by how different it was than the play I remembered reading in high school. Just the power imbalances between John Proctor and Abigail mirrored a lot of things that were going on in the MeToo movement in that moment. Also, the setting of Salem, of this Puritan American setting. I grew up in small town Southern Baptist Georgia, and it felt like there was a parallel there as well. Just as Arthur Miller wrote, The Crucible as an allegory for McCarthyism, I felt like, "Oh, I think there's an opportunity to continue this allegory."

Alison Stewart: Danya, the show is set in 2018, so we're in the midst of the MeToo movement. What do you remember about that time seven years ago? Think about it. The conversations you had that helped you figure out how you were going to direct this play.

Danya Taymor: The thing I remember most about that time is when the first article came out in the New York Times about Harvey Weinstein. I remember being glued to it, sitting on my couch at home, and my then-boyfriend trying to say something to me about dinner. I was like, "Just a minute. Just a minute." I just had to read this thing and get through it. I just sat there.

I think what happened to many of us after the MeToo movement started to come out and all these stories came out is we started to rethink our own experiences, and not just our own experiences, how we thought about our experiences and our lives and intimacy and desire and all these different kinds of experiences we had had. It became actually more confusing, more murky, because we were able to look back at our experiences and say, "Oh, wow, maybe this was more complicated, complex than I thought," and in some cases, maybe this was actually clear than I thought.

When we started to look at the play, I think remembering that flood of emotion, the confusion, the intensity of that moment felt so important to bring into the space and remind us all. The other thing I think came up so much in the wake of MeToo was how personal it all felt for everyone in society in different ways. I think that's something that Kimberly brought out in the play so well. What happens when it's not somebody you read about in the paper? What happens when it's somebody in your community who you love and respect, who has good qualities? What do you do then? I find that to be incredibly important to wrestle with.

Alison Stewart: Amalia, when we meet your character in the play, Raelynn, what's going on with her?

Amalia Yoo: She has been through it. She's really lost her entire support system. She has broken up with her boyfriend of seven years after he cheated on her with her best friend. She has some of her other friends still by her side, but really, her closest anchors are lost. She's coming to terms with that and also coming to terms with the idea that she can choose who she wants to be, and she has no idea who that is. She's in a place of self-discovery and confusion and hurt and loss, but there's still a little twinkle of hope and excitement of getting to discover who that person might be and who it is she wants to be.

Alison Stewart: This play has a lot of different reveals, Kimberly, in it, as we get to know the characters, as we get to know what's been going on with them. How did you work on pacing those reveals?

Kimberly Belflower: That's a good question. It really evolved over time. I started writing this play in 2018, and I think the kind of core story with Raelynn and Shelby's friendship with Shelby, Shelby's central reveal, not to spoil anything. That was always in the play. Then stuff with Ivy's dad and other characters that were these micro-reveals leading up to the major reveals. That came around later when I was like, "Oh, how do I kind of-- I know that I have this big piece of information coming that maybe some people are going to see coming, but how do I make it as surprising as possible for as many people as possible?

Then that helped me then deepen the characters that were surrounding this core relationship of Shelby and Raelynn, and figure out like, "Okay, what play can I make people think they're watching? What questions can I make the audience ask ahead of this thing that changes everything?" Then, even if you do see it coming, how can I make it happen in a way that's surprising? Sometimes it's not the information itself, but the way that the information is communicated in the moment.

I think there have been versions where that big reveal comes earlier, comes later, and then trying to figure out, like, okay, how? That comes from workshops, from readings, from different development stages, but being like, "Where is the audience's patience at this point? Where are they getting ahead of the play? Where is the play getting ahead of them? How do I kind of calibrate accordingly?"

Alison Stewart: Danya, this is something I'm so glad I get to talk to you about, because I saw the play Saturday night, and I was really struck by the moments that each character is in the spotlight, and the world around them shivers and their brain quivers, and everybody's got a different expression. Each character has it. The lighting around them is out of sync. They seem to have something on their mind. We're not sure exactly what they have on their mind. Tell us about this decision.

Danya Taymor: Kimberly's play is amazing, and it has 15 transitions. Kimberly has so much trust for directors because she doesn't tell you how to do them. What the play is doing is it's dropping you deep inside these teenage girls, and it's letting you experience the world through their perspective. These moments that we call Girl Focus.

Alison Stewart: Is that what they're called? Oh, that's so--

Danya Taymor: We call them that, yeah. That's our unofficial title. Are these moments where we make external what one of these characters is feeling internally, and we allow the audience in to what she might be feeling, even though she's not exposing that to the world around her. My hope is that then when you look at a kid or you look at a teenage girl, you look at any human being, and they're presenting one way, you might be curious to think, "Oh, what's actually going on underneath there? Are they okay? Maybe it's not what it appears."

These moments of interiority with each of the characters are so intimate. They require so much of the incredible actors because they're looking at the audience. They're super exposed, and in many moments, it's their most vulnerable. In the transitional language, I wanted to deepen the work that Kimberly was doing through my own directorial lens with the characters, with the design team, and make sure that these transitions were still doing storytelling without adding any information, just letting us go deeper into the souls of the characters.

Alison Stewart: Amalia, can you tell us a little bit about your Girl Focus moment, conversations you had with Danya about how to portray that moment where there's no dialogue, it's just your face?

Amalia Yoo: Yes. I love micro focus.

[laughter]

I feel lucky because it's the first time. Mine is the first time that it happens. At that point in the play, we're still teaching people how to watch the play. Just conversations that we had about it just reminded me of that feeling, especially in high school, where you're hurting so bad. There's so much going on in your interior world, but you can't show it. You have to put on a brave face. You have to get through the seven periods that you still have left in your day. It's scary because we're looking out into the audience and seeing their faces. That's frightening sometimes, but it changes every night. It's really powerful. It feels powerful in the moment, doing it.

Alison Stewart: We only see the adults in the show in their professional settings. We see Mr. Smith and the guidance counselor, Ms. Gallagher. Danya, what conversations did you have with the actors about how they would present themselves at work?

Danya Taymor: With the adult actors?

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Danya Taymor: Oh, well, Mr. Smith is the best teacher. He's the teacher we all wish we had. Some of us did have him. I think that he brings out the best in his students. He's really creative with what assignments that he gives. I think it felt really important for Gabriel Ebert, who plays him, to bring that sense of goodness to the character. Then Molly Griggs, who plays Bailey Gallagher. She's in between Mr. Smith and the young girls who are in school. She's 24. She's trying to prove herself, and she's stuck between being a teenager and being an adult, and she bridges that gap.

We see how she is of a different micro generation, even though she's so close to the girls. We're able to see how these differences in how we take up space as women, what we feel like we're allowed to see, what we've been taught, even in the span of eight years, can shift so much. With those two characters, I just encourage them to bring their sense of goodness to the characters and then let the play take care of the rest.

Alison Stewart: Amalia, the characters are so into Mr. Smith, some more than others, but they're really into him as a teacher initially. What do they love about him so much?

Amalia Yoo: He listens to them and he takes them seriously, and that is the best thing that someone could offer these teenage girls. There's a line where we say he treats us like adults, he doesn't treat us like preschoolers like all the other teachers do. His assignments are fun, and he allows everyone to be their truest self in the classroom.

He creates a safe space where even if you don't always have the best thing to say, you don't always know the best thing to say. You're still invited to say things and speak up in class. He sees every single one of the students and makes them feel like a light.

Alison Stewart: Kimberly, I want to talk. There are also boys in this play. They're so genius. The boys are so great in this play. What did you want to explore about what it means to be a teen boy, and also teen boys, just as they're turning into young men?

Kimberly Belflower: Yes. Thank you for asking that. I love the boys at our play. There are two teenage boys, Lee and Mason. I think that we see in them-- They're both at this crossroads, especially Lee has been given a very narrow definition of what it is to be a man in the world. I think growing up in the rural South, I saw that happened to a lot of boys. Men don't show their emotions and don't talk about their feelings, and keep it down. Strength means one thing and one thing only. In Lee, we see this person who has suppressed all of these really complicated feelings because he doesn't know how to talk about them.

He hasn't been given the chance or the instruction of how to talk about them. We see those feelings kind of curdle and start to become anger, and these things, and he's acting out instead of dealing with the feelings. Then we see Mason, who joins this feminist club accidentally. Then we see him, and he says the wrong thing a lot of the time. We see that maybe he has also been given narrow definitions of things. Then we see him being willing to learn and willing to change in a way that Lee is not.

I think we see these two boys start to-- It is like just the first steps down different paths. Yes, we talked about that a lot of Mason never stops trying, even when he says the wrong thing, even when he messes up, he never stops trying. His last action of the play is supporting these girls. I hope that the boys in the play make people think about the ways that we talk to young men about their feelings and about what it means to be a man and about the possibilities of being a person in the world. Yes, I love them.

Alison Stewart: All right, I'm going to read from the playbill for Amalia. It says Amalia Yoo is thrilled to be making her Broadway debut. Born and raised in New York City, she played Luna in Grief Camp at the Atlantic Theater. On-screen credits include No Hard Feelings, Netflix's Grand Army. She also played Joey in an off Broadway production of Slut, the play NPR's Green Space, downstairs.

[laughter]

She's a proud alumna of LaGuardia High School. LaGuardia is not your average high school, but in many ways it is. I have friends' kids who go to LaGuardia, they go to high school. What do you remember from your high school experience that you use every night?

Amalia Yoo: It's crazy that 2018 was when I was a junior, and now I'm playing a junior. In 2018, on Broadway. I think the friendships that I had in high school, that I am lucky enough to still have today. I think about those friendships every single night. How even when you feel so far away from your friends, there's still a connective tissue and there's still so much love because you have all of this shared life together, and it's such a precious time and to get to spend that with other people who know you better than you know yourself is really a gift. Yes, I think about that. I think about those friendships every single night.

Alison Stewart: That was my conversation with playwright Kimberly Belflower, director Danya Taymoor, and actor Amalia Yoo. We discussed their new play, John Proctor is the Villain, which has earned seven Tony nominations. Coming up, it's time for musicals. We'll talk about Gypsy with Audra McDonald and hear live music from the cast of Real Women Have Curves. Stay with us.