Over the span of his 50-plus years as a playwright, Arthur Miller has never been one to shy away from the issues of the day. After he came to White River Junction, Vt., Sunday for the reading of the work-in-progress "Resurrection Blues," it doesn't appear that time has mellowed him.
The new play was read by a cast of actors brought in from New York, Washington and even Hanover as a benefit for the Northern Stage company at the Briggs Opera House.
The dark play about a dictator crucifying a Messiah figure and the American television crew televising presses hot buttons like commercialism, American foreign policy, drugs and the media.
Miller grappled with all these points of great controversy while provoking big laughs from the audience. "Resurrection Blues" was peppered with amusing and entirely quotable lines like "War comes and goes like a mild diarrhea," "Is there a hole in the body they don't make a dollar on?" and "Poetry and the market are both based on rules that the successful don't follow."
Through the duration of the reading, Miller was a palpable presence in every part of the room. He sat in the front row in the center, clad in a tan sweater, arms folded and legs crossed focusing with great intensity on the actors on stage, occasionally stroking his chin or cracking a smile. His expression was difficult to read, but by the end it was clear that he was pleased with what he had seen as he applauded the actors with a grin on his face that went from ear to ear.
Miller then spoke to the audience in a short question-and- answer session moderated by Northern Stage artistic director Brooke Ciardelli after the reading concluded. Addressing the audience in his signature style, his answers were short and simple. When asked if he thought much about the political climate of America had changed since the era of McCarthyism, he said, "It's the same music, just with a different orchestra."
Miller was convicted of contempt of Congress in 1957 for his refusal to turn over names of writers with Communist sympathies and, in response, wrote the play "The Crucible."
When questioned about "Resurrection Blues" specifically, an audience member wondered if there was a "good guy" among the cast of characters.
"Sure," Miller replied, "it's the guy who isn't there."
There is one line in "Resurrection Blues" that says "We don't deserve this world." Another audience member asked Miller if there were any way for an artist such as himself to make humanity more worthy of this world.
"There are thousands of ways for art to affect the world, if it does at all," Miller responded, "It changes the atmosphere, but doesn't change anything immediately."
Among the actors on stage Sunday were two Dartmouth students: Amanda Posner '04 in the role of Sarah, a sound technician, and Jonathan Smolian '04 in the role of Phil, a cameraman.
Asked about the experience of reading a work-in-progress by Arthur Miller, Posner said "He's a living legend, and I get to tell my kids when they study 'A View from the Bridge' that I worked with him."
Indeed, Miller does have a legacy that will last for generations, but that is a legacy of writing plays that are stark dramas of American life, tragedies of flawed men and women trying to make good for themselves in a land of supposed opportunity. What would lead him to write this play as a farcical comedy?
"I find myself laughing a lot," Miller told The Dartmouth.
For a writer who is known so much for his realism, one could take away some hope in the fact that there is room for laughter in an Arthur Miller play.
