A full transcript of our exclusive interview with actor Richard Armitage
Iâm Richard Armitage and I play John Proctor.
I think that Arthur Miller wrote the play because he was probably in his own crucible at the time that he wrote it. I feel that his world was kind of collapsing and heating up in a way. I believe that he wrote a play that was about suppression and oppression and he used something that wasnât directly about him and his world to represent that. I think because Miller used a parable, which was the persecution of the Salem witches, and I think that by not setting it in a specific time to him it became something that would transcend time. As we look back we therefore look forward, because it becomes an example of something that happened before was happening to him, and will happen again and Iâm sure that, sadly, in years to come weâll be looking to this play for examples of how not to behave.
You dig deep in yourself to find the resonances for the character, but certainly the playing of Proctor feels like an ascent for sure. At the last moment before he ascends or he summits in the play, he actually is at the lowest point. He climbs and climbs and climbs and then falls and then has to ascend to the summit. But we began with the text, itâs all there; Miller gives you everything that you could possibly need, not just in the dialogue but also in the stage directions. He gives you a kind of inner psychology to how the characterâs feeling, every blow that hits them - not physical blows but emotional or psychological blows. Miller describes, many times, things like an arrow kind of piercing into him [or] an agonising weight on his shoulders. Miller really gives you the graph of where the characterâs heading to so that was really the starting point.
Heâs a physical man, he works the land; his life is about toil. On numerous occasions he talks about his cows, about planting his field, about being by the forest edge; heâs a labourer, heâs a farmworker. Finding a man that had an emotional maturity - we would call it in a modern context - to the Salamites of 1692⊠there was no kind of idea of post-Freudian analysis of the psychology, so for him to have an open mind and an open heart is something which is unusual. It happens to him because of whatâs emerging in his world, which is his descent into his own crucible.
I believe that the essence of John Proctor is that despite what he thinks and says, he is a good man who made a mistake, a huge mistake, in his affair with Abigail Williams. But I think that - I sense that - he was always destined to make that mistake and thatâs what makes Millerâs creation a bit of a genius creation; to Proctor itâs not a surprise that he fell like that, in a way he always knew that he had that fatal flaw in him, itâs why he chose Elizabeth Proctor as his wife, because she would be the one person who would keep him on the straight and narrow and it made it doubly worse. I do believe that Miller is somehow representing himself in the character of John Proctor. I feel that thereâs a cry from Miller about his own life and his own fallibility that he pens in Proctor. Proctorâs a very physical man. Heâs got a very voracious sexual appetite and I think thatâs the core of his essence. Heâs a man that works the land, he works with animals, he eats his food and he has sex with his wife and itâs essential to his core being and when that was denied to him, as his wife was sick,Â
instinctively he went somewhere else. Thatâs not to condone that what he did was right, but itâs an appetite that the man has. I think that in the process of the breaking relationship that happened, because of that action, with Elizabeth, he discovers what love is and to him - and to me as well I think as Iâve discovered Proctorâs discovery of love is - itâs about forgiveness and acceptance of the flawed man, which is everything that Elizabeth gives to him in the final act of the play.
I think Proctor learns or finds the courage to die for the truth, that to die for the truth is better than to live with a lie branded on your forehead, metaphorically.
Before I came to rehearse the play, I visited Salem. I wanted to get to the source of who these people really were, because I think the first thing that really helps me is to believe they were actually living and breathing people, not just characters in a book or pictures, because weâve seen a million pictures. And so, I visited Salem and saw the foundations of the parsonage where it all started, which is still there. I saw the lane down which the girls would have trodden at night as they went into the forest to dance with Tituba. I saw where Proctorâs house is and the brook by the side of his house. That was my starting point, so I came to the rehearsal room with a lot of rich nourishment, I suppose, that I shared with everybody. And then we started to build Salem amongst us. It involved a long arduous process of finding how we can leave ourselves behind and become those pioneers, I suppose, the colonists: the first settlers in America that lived in caves for the first ten years of their existence and what that was like to really, really work the land and what would happen when there was a terrible winter; when Billy Putnamâs babies, seven babies, died and the reality of
that world.
It was interesting to really find out how these people would have survived a terrible winter and lose seven babies probably over the course of a number of winters. Itâs mentioned in the first act, when I think Rebecca Nurse says; âWe thought to have peace this year because last year had been such a terrible harvest and people were starvingâ, so we were working towards finding out what that would be like.
First of all, finding a physical vocabulary for Proctor was my starting point because I knew I could get inside the psychology because thatâs something that we do on a daily basis: we go through the process of analysis. The physical thing was something I would have to work on over five weeks. I went to work on a farm in Massachusetts; I worked with some cows for a week and swept out the midden and drove the cows with a whip, as I wanted to see what it felt like. I was programming my mind for the conditions: the weather, the smell of the cows, anything I could get that would give me a sensory injection into the character.
You know, I did a private moment exercise where I was sharpening an axe for about seven hours. And really after a few hours, youâre not just sharpening the axe, itâs like your body and the axe are as one. So all of that work⊠an animal, I saw him as a kind of hybrid of an animal that was close to a bear, but had the ferocity of a predatory cat. So I did a bit of animal work too.
The analogy of climbing a mountain is a good one, because there are finger holds along the way that you just grip onto, in a way too many to mention, many that resonate for me. But in terms of when Miller chooses to truly reveal the character, I feel that itâs not always in the lines of the man himself, but I think the first finger hold is when Abigail says to him, âI see you looking up, burning in your lonelinessâ. I think thatâs the first finger hold of Proctor, because itâs true, after Elizabeth was sick, I think there was a burning loneliness in him and thatâs the beginning of his fall. Right the way through to the end of the play, when he says âI have given you my soul, leave me my name,â thatâs the summit, but along the way there are a million finger holds that Miller gives us.
In every text itâs the first thing I do, when I start to strip out the text and I call it the stripping out process, the stripping out of the text. I look at what does the character say about himself, what do other people say about him, what does my character say about other people - because those three positions pretty much give you the man. As soon as you come into a scene, you have to figure out what your characterâs going to gather before they leave. And interestingly in Act 1, itâs taken me a long time to figure out why Proctor is even in that room, in a room that he does not want to be in. He cannot bear any of the people in the room and the fatal flaw that will crack him open, Abigail, is in the room and yet Miller puts him in that room. The society is in crisis and as Proctor says, âThe road past my house is a pilgrimage to Salemâ one morning, and I think he has felt this lift in the town and heâs gone to see what the fuss is about. Itâs a
little device that Miller has to get Proctor into that room to have to encounter Abigail. But against his better judgement he finds himself alone with Abigail and everything starts to fall apart from there.
Itâs just different every night to play Act 4. I prepare for it in a very specific way,
which has been the same since I first explored it in the rehearsal room. We found a stress position for a character that Iâm not permitted to move from. In the rehearsal room, YaĂ«l [Farber] put Abigail Williams on my back, which would have been unbearable for a 12-week run. But it has something to do with suffering and a certain amount of toil and resilience to that, that propels John and me into Act 4. The question over his name is the final destination for what heâs prepared to give and what heâs not prepared to give up. I think heâs prepared to give them what they want to an extent, but the final straw is the prospect of his name being nailed to the church, which says that this man betrayed all of his friends to save his own life. I think itâs absolutely what was happening to Miller at the moment when he decided to write the play when Elia Kazan came to him in the forest and said, âIâm going to name names and Iâm going to betray friends.â I think in that last moment when [Proctor] says, âItâs my name, I can not do itâ, thatâs when Proctor transcends to being greater than man I suppose.
© Digital Theatre.com Ltd 2015
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