Introduction

Abstract

However much the scenery, lighting and music used for the production of Miller’s plays may depart from realism, the performance style usually does not: ‘the actor’s appearance on the stage in normal human guise leads us to expect a realistic treatment’ (Introduction to Collected Plays). For example, when Miller redirected The Crucible six months after it first opened, at the same theatre, he replaced the pictorially realistic log cabin set with black curtains; but the acting style remained realistic. Death of a Salesman was first directed by Elia Kazan and its first Willy was Lee J. Cobb, both alumni of the Group Theatre, which in the 1930s brought the Stanislavsky system of acting to America. Many members of that first company belonged to the Actor’s Studio, which derived from the Group and whose guru was a cofounder of the Group, Lee Strasberg, a name virtually synonymous with the American variant of the Stanislavsky system, ‘method acting’. Many members of the original company of The Crucible also belonged to the Actor’s Studio.