Arthur Millers’ “Creepy Girls In The Woods With Glowing Eyes”
The Musical
As explained before, I had watched The Crucible and knew the story before going out to shoot promotional stills for this play, which was a first. I’d already decided to shoot the images in the style of The Witch, which seemed thematically appropriate for the setting. While driving over, I had started to think about Fairy Tales, and how horrifying they can be when bought into as historical accounts, witches particularly. The old woman flying through the skies, eating children and bewitching passersby, and causing whatever other maladies could occur.
Then I though, what would it be like if you had a Witch at a young age?
My way in to the witch idea was realizing there was a question in my head since first watching The Crucible that I couldn’t answer: What exactly was it about Abigail Williams that turned this man to adultery?
As played by Winona Ryder, Abigail is obsessive, following John Proctor and idolizing him to the point of insanity (and well past it, considering the trials that actually followed)
But this never convinced me that this would seduce a good man to adultery. It read more as a teenage girl with a crush, a situation wherein most adult men would write off as cute, maybe, and move on with their lives.
Since I’m still a few decades off from my gritty reboot of The Crucible starring Sophia Lillis, I wanted to use this as an opportunity to explore my interests in the play.
If you go based off of the logic of Puritans, The Devil is everywhere, and constantly tempting us to stray; to show ankles and think impure thoughts.
So what if, recognizing her obsession with “winning” Proctor, the Devil was able to attach himself to Abigail, and lead her to begin a metaphorical orgy of sin so prolific it’s still taught in schools.
That’s interesting.
Now another question: how do you show that, yes, there is something “off” about these girls without going full warts and broomsticks?
The answer is glowing eyes.
Okay the answer is a little more nuanced than that. But it boils down to glowing eyes.
The actress playing Abigail already has hazel eyes, so using that as a starting point I brought out the green, and warmed the overall color temperature of just the eye area.
After fiddling with clarity settings and various contrast adjustments, I ended up with a look that was decidedly strange, but something you wouldn’t necessarily notice while scrolling past the photo.
It seemed to float off the image almost unaffected by the shadow on her face.
I then extended this look of Devilry to the rest of the girls in the cast, with the idea being that The Devil has spread his influence using Abigail’s cult of personality to influence the girls, for a variety of reasons, which I decided to fully flesh out, because I’m insane.
The youngest of the group is also the youngest in her family. Being a child AND a woman in puritan times means there are hardly any creatures in her world with less power than herself.
During the shoot, I nicknamed the actress “Vice President”, insinuating her role as Abigail’s right hand, willing to follow her as far as it benefits her, but keeping herself in the shadow of her leader so she can work on her own goals.
The word “meek” was used by me almost incessantly to describe this character.
For the character, I figured she would be, there’s that word again, the meekest of the group. Someone who would do all she could to not be noticed, but someone who also has a guilt complex.
This ends up dovetailing into the actual play, but I learned that after completing the image.
As you may have gathered, I don’t actually know any of the characters names aside from Abigail, and also don’t know any of the actresses names besides, this one.
For this character, I learned she’s the closest thing to a friend Abigail really has, so I wanted to paint her as the consigliere to Abigail’s Marlon Brando. This ironically made her the least interesting to the Devil as she was already content with her position.
This means her eyes are the most subtle of the girls.
I described this character as the girl in The Grudge before she became the girl in The Grudge.
She is the most ambiguous of the group. Silent, more or less, watching.
The opposite of myself, basically.
I ended up creating an idea that she is actually absent, and is instead a vessel for some sort of evil spirit. I can imagine her pulling a Jennifer’s Body and morphing into some intensely horrifying creature.
I want to be clear, the actual actress is not an evil monster. She drank an iced coffee from Wawa and wore pink sneakers.
The depth of this character is enormous. Even if her real life was less fantastical, the play and the surrounding pop culture identity of Abigail Williams allows for a huge breadth of interpretation, from evil bitch to abused child acting at the behest of her father.
In my head, this character is a girl with a crush, turned up to 11. She believes the John is HER soulmate. Elizabeth Proctor is standing in the way.
She decides to use her ability to spin the truth, and flat out lie, to climb to the heights of this hurricane of paranoia. She watches and manipulates from the outside looking in, but is able to appear at it’s center at whim.
With a quick primer on their backstories, it starts to makes sense how the girls are laid out, but I’ll illustrate it bluntly because ambiguity scares me.
Abigail stands at the center, the start of the evil.
She faces away from Shailene, distancing herself from the one most likely to break from the guilt.
The Vice President stands at her side, looking down her nose at us in a condescending way, but in a way that only a child can.
Flanking the right of the image, Magenta looks on, almost blank.
Then on the far left is Samara. She almost disappears into the fringes of the frame until you remember she’s there. An appropriately fringe character for my most fringe character idea.
The Crucible was written as a parable for McCarthyism in America, a similar witch hunt that led to a ridiculous hysteria.
So many years on, it’s still an appropriate metaphor, but it also carries more depth.
The character of Abigail in particular allows for such a huge range of interpretations.
The production I photographed for is being put on at 1st Street Theater in the early part of 2018.
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