Sarah Ruhl’s Becky Nurse of Salem at Trinity Rep Shines a Light on the Marginalized in America

Becky Nurse of Salem (US/UK), Sarah Ruhl’s brilliant new play about an ordinary but strong-willed grandmother just trying to get by in post-Obama America, recently completed a successful run at Trinity Rep in Providence, Rhode Island. We spoke to the production’s director, Curt Columbus, and lead actor, Angela Brazil, about their experience in presenting this dynamic, moving and funny play.

For those who don’t know Becky Nurse of Salem, how would you describe the events of the play?

Angela Brazil: In Becky Nurse of Salem, Sarah Ruhl weaves together the strands of a working-class woman in 2016 in Salem, MA trying to hold her family together, the opioid crisis, the historic Salem witch trials, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, and the enduring human capacity for love.

What drew you to this play as a director/actor?

Curt Columbus: Sarah Ruhl. Sarah Ruhl. Sarah Ruhl. That’s what drew me to this play. I have been a fan of her work for decades, and during my tenure as artistic director at Trinity Repertory Company, we have produced more of Sarah’s plays than any other writer except Shakespeare. Becky Nurse of Salem is simply an extraordinary example of her writing – funny, thrilling, heartbreaking, then heartwarming. Ever since I first read an early draft of the play during the pandemic, I knew we would produce it at our theater.

AB: In recent days, I’ve been thinking about all of the noise in our current landscape. All of the shouting, all of the hyperbole. And about the disturbing fact that what begins as noise can easily evolve into “truth” and then be cemented as “history.”

How crucial gifted writers are. Gifted writers help us hear through the noise to the real stories inside the maelstrom. They offer us real human beings. They do the extraordinary work of cracking false history open and allowing us to see and hear and experience the things inside anew.

Sarah Ruhl is one of those writers. That’s what drew me to this play – the noise of history and a gifted writer who’s written a story that allows us to see the real human beings existing inside. And that Becky is a working-class woman who’s (ahem) north of her 40s (characters rarely allowed to hold the center of dramatic literature) was just delicious icing on the cake.

“Becky Nurse of Salem is simply an extraordinary example of [Ruhl’s] writing – funny, thrilling, heartbreaking, then heartwarming.” – Curt

In her notes on the play, Sarah Ruhl says, “A playwright has both a public way into a play and a private way into a play.” Is this also true for an actor or director? If so, what was your public way into this play, and what was your private one? 

AB: I think every actor finds a private way into a play! Some of us are quiet about it, and some of us build community by sharing, and sometimes the part or the story dictate that choice. We talked a lot in rehearsal about Becky’s love for her family and for Bob – about what family means to the people in the play. How fiercely they hold each other. And when I tell you about the extraordinary group of actors in this production and how Sarah’s story worked on us all to create a rehearsal room where we held each other fiercely with so much love – well, those things were my public way into the production. And as for my private way in… I’ll cherish keeping that bit for myself.

CC: The public way in is simple for me, which was reframing American stories to center women. It’s really about how we tell our foundational myths in a new way, for new audiences to discover new roads into old narratives. I mean, how many of us have had to struggle through The Crucible in high school or even in production, wondering why so much of the narrative centers on John Proctor and why that play has become so central to the construction of the American Myth. Becky Nurse gives us a whole new lens for looking at that story, and how the legacy of the way it has been told shapes us as Americans today. Like Angela, my private way into the play is… private.

Trinity Rep presented Becky Nurse of Salem in repertory with Talene Monahon’s play The Good John Proctor, which can be described as a prequel to the events of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Can you talk a bit about this choice? How does Becky Nurse of Salem relate to The Crucible and to The Good John Proctor? 

CC: This is related to my answer of the earlier question, which is, both of these plays center the folks who would not hold that dramatic center in traditional tellings of these stories. Angela talked about how Becky is a woman in middle age, someone who rarely gets to be the center of traditional drama, and in Talene’s terrific play, the entire show is populated by young girls. Also, all three plays center around the very New England story of the Salem witch trials, so they all connect to each other narratively. It was a great pairing of these two modern plays, in conversation with the ghost of Miller’s play.

There are so many resonant themes in this play, notably misogyny and public judgment of women, the ongoing effects of America’s opioid crisis, and the interplay of art and history. Which theme(s) in the play resonate most strongly for you?

AB: I’m not coming up with a simple answer to this question, and I think that’s because 1) as an actor, I’m not working thematically – I’m working with story, character, relationships. And I’m trusting that the playwright’s story and the director’s lens will triangulate with what I’m creating to amplify, refract or solidify larger questions about theme. But 2) I also think that Becky Nurse of Salem in particular works a little differently. Rather than honing in on single strands of theme, Sarah’s creating an accumulation that’s actually the most profound audience experience for this particular story. So, my experience of that was that the play echoed a little differently in each of the audience members I spoke with in the lobby after the show – but that people had had a collective common fullness of experience.

CC: The theme that resonates so strongly with me is an amalgamation of the themes in the question, which add up to the theme of “what happens to the marginalized in America?” Becky struggles with addiction, with her past, with her level of education, with her economic constraint. So do the people in the play around her. These are the folks who often are not on the mind of theater-going audiences. Sarah’s great play shines a light on their story.

“What happens to the marginalized in America? Sarah’s great play shines a light on their story.” – Curt

Trinity Rep is in Providence, Rhode Island, not too far from Salem, Massachusetts, where the play takes place. What about this play do you think struck a chord with a New England audience? Are there elements of the play that are uniquely New England, or could it take place anywhere?

CC: I think the play is very rooted in the New England cultural landscape. The rhythms of the lines are written in a very specific dialect, one that you can only find in the area around Salem. That specificity really resonated with our audiences; they often remarked on how nice it was to see a “real New England story.”  At the same time, this is an AMERICAN story, one writ large. Tennessee Williams writes regionally specific work, yet it is produced everywhere in our country and part of our cultural narrative. Becky Nurse should occupy that same cultural space, because of its regional specificity.

The play wrestles with ideas of witchcraft, Wicca, faith and the supernatural. Did working on the play change your attitude towards any of these things?

CC: Sarah’s work always incorporates the unknown and the other-worldly. It is part of the universe her plays occupy, and it would be impossible to produce one of her plays without embracing those things. She celebrates the things we can’t see, or things we don’t normally look at long and hard. It’s related to the earlier answer about marginalization; all of these things live at the margins of our world. Sarah simply wants us to pull back the curtain.

What challenges did you face in presenting this play onstage before a live audience? Were there any technical challenges (e.g., scene/costume changes, accents, research, design elements) you had to overcome?

CC: I mentioned the North Shore Massachusetts accent earlier, and I do think that is incredibly important and requires a lot of work to sound authentic (Angela was a marvel at that accent). The biggest technical hurdle is the speed with which the play must play. You do not have any time for scene changes, moving furniture on and off stage. That kills the rhythm and the forward motion of the play. We had one environment that transformed with single, simple gestures throughout. Without that velocity, you don’t hear the humor of the play, nor do you get the whirl of motion that Becky is experiencing, which is key to her journey.

“In Sarah’s writing, comedy and pathos live side by side. Sarah knows how to open an audience up with laughter – deep, bellyaching laughter.” – Angela

The play deals with some heavy topics, but it’s also very funny. Are there specific moments in the play that particularly tickled you (or the audience)?

AB: In Sarah’s writing, comedy and pathos live side by side. Perhaps she understands that that’s how life works, and trusts that the familiarity of that exchange in our own lives is one of the reasons audiences come along so enthusiastically for the ride. Sarah knows how to open an audience up with laughter – deep, bellyaching laughter. Becky’s no-bullshit way of moving through the world was a comedy gold mine. And I can confidently say that wrestling a Salem police officer for control of a naked mannequin while dressed in a mop cap and historical garb was a highlight. I’d be lying if I tried to pretend that scene didn’t grow a little at each performance.

CC: We made sure that the comedy is front and center in our production. I mean, come on, one of the character’s is named, simply, The Witch. What are you supposed to do with that if you don’t understand that it is a comedy. Angela came up with a particularly stupid choreography (that’s a compliment) for the sequence where Becky places the charms in Stan’s backpack and Shelby’s desk. It was Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, performed without special effects by a middle-aged woman. We played the stupidest version of the Mission Impossible theme song we could find while she did it. Audiences howled with laughter.

But this is one of the tricks of the play. It must be howlingly funny, because it is also utterly heartbreaking. Because we watch Becky being completely ridiculous in her machinations and interactions with everyone else, we feel doubly for her when she reveals her truth at the end of the play. That’s why Sara Ruhl is so brilliant, both of those things live side by side.

One of my favorite lines in the play is “Maybe plays are corny, but the truth is no one is ever lonely when they’re in a play.” How does Becky Nurse of Salem, and/or your participation in presenting it, address the idea of community? 

CC: I think the idea of community that we pursued was around different tellings of the same story. Our book club read the fantastic book, I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Conde, in order to center a BIPOC perspective on the same story, and our lobby art displays were works by local Native American artists. All of this goes back to the impulse of putting these two plays together; how do you create a community conversation around the other ways into the same, classic narrative.

“I hope that every production will revel in the side-splitting humor, the ferocity, the turning-on-its-head of the Salem witch trial story we’ve carried with us for so long.” – Angela

One question asked by the play is “Who gets to tell the story?” What was it like for you to tell this story, and what are your hopes for others (i.e., directors and actors at regional or community theatres) who will continue to tell it?

AB: It was an exhilarating ride every night. Becky’s voice is so fresh, her point of view so clear and honest and sometimes stubborn and unsparing. She fights like hell for the people she loves even though society says she, and they, don’t matter as much as some. I hope that every production will revel in the side-splitting humor, the ferocity, the turning-on-its-head of the Salem witch trial story we’ve carried with us for so long. I hope future productions will be as moved as I am by the women’s voices reclaiming this story.

Concord Theatricals proudly licenses Becky Nurse of Salem to theatres around the world. Why should other theatres produce this play?

AB: BECAUSE IT WILL KNOCK YOUR SOCKS OFF. Because comedies are necessary right now in a divisive and divided time- and comedies that feature audacious women are a prescient way of moving into our future. Because it’s a gas to do. Because your audiences will have multiple ways in. Because it will stay with them for longer than you – and they – think it will. Because it’s a bold play by one of our great contemporary playwrights that gives us an unlikely heroine to root for as she takes on history and our tumultuous present. Because it’s funny, funny, funny. And because it’s heartbreaking and true. A FULLHEARTED ENDORSEMENT TO PRODUCE THIS PLAY!

CC:  This play is an incredibly important American story. As we grapple with who we are as a nation today, we need to really see the Becky Nurses in our country. They are the folks who need to be brought back to the center of the conversation somehow, in order for us to move forward as Americans. I think everyone needs to produce the play for that reason.

But also, they need to produce it because it is so funny and human and heartwarming. That too.

Is there anything else you’d like to share about your experience working on Becky Nurse of Salem?

AB: This summer, unrelated to last fall’s production at Trinity, I gave a reading to a group of students and faculty of Sarah’s beautiful afterward to the play and interspersed it with several of Becky’s monologues. The magic of the play’s language seeped through the cracks of the country barn we were in, and into each of us. The audience was rapt. Spellbound. A bat flew in, and circled overhead, and vanished afterwards during the applause. It felt so good to be haunted and thrilled by Sarah’s play again.

To license a production of Becky Nurse of Salem by Sarah Ruhl, visit Concord Theatricals in the US or UK.

To learn more about Trinity Repertory Company or buy tickets to their next production, visit the Trinity Rep website.