Journal of a Sabbatical

October 28, 2000

judgement

Quote of the Day: "This is scarier than Halloween because this really happened!" -- Julie Mofford

Today's Reading: Circling the Sacred Mountain by Robert Thurman and Tad Wise

This afternoon I went to a reading of Julie's latest play, The Judgement of Martha Carrier, at the Andover Historical Society. This is the second play she's written about Andover's role in the witch trials. She also wrote a play about one of the accused witches in Reading (a nearby town) and a book about the witch trials. I mentioned Andover's witch history briefly in yesterday's entry. I guess I had it on my mind.

In 1692 Andover believed the entire Massachusetts Bay Colony was under attack by the devil who had hired witches as his agents. The devil was loose in Massachusetts and Andover was the last battleground. During the Salem witch trials, Andover residents accused the greatest number of people (48 I think - I'll have to check that with Julie). The Martha Carrier case is particularly chilling because her own children testified against her, and she was convicted (and hanged) on the basis of spectral (supernatural) evidence.

The play was excellent. Sue Lenoe played Martha Carrier and Tom played the Magistrate as he did in Cry Witch. The afflicted and the Carrier children were played by local youngsters. The audience got to participate as villagers. I had one line: "We must rid ourselves of this dangerous woman!"

This play basically expanded a scene from Cry Witch and focused on just one defendant. I remembered the scene of Sarah Carrier's testimony from Cry Witch. The almost-eight year old daughter testifies to the most bizarre and unbelievable things involving a cat telling her how to afflict a neighbor and other weird stuff and the Magistrate believes her. Tom almost laughed on the line "And what did the cat say to you?" as did the audience, but the terror of the whole thing still came through. I found that testimony to be the most frightening part of today's performance too.

Julie gave a compelling introduction and ran an excellent question and answer session afterwards. She reminded people in the introduction that this is scarier than Halloween because it's real. Real Andover people, ancestors of some of the people in the audience, accused and convicted their neighbors. This was all about intolerance, poverty, and fear. And as much as we don't like to think so, even today people still commit terrible injustices for the same reasons.