Rachel Rutherford: Kaddish for Arthur Miller

Arthur Aster Miller, 1915 - 2005

Playwright Arthur Miller died yesterday. You can find a beautiful bio with fantastic pictures of him, written while he was still alive, here -- fittingly, in the notes of a Sheffield theatre which was producing one of his plays, The Crucible.

The Crucible was the first play I appeared in, in high school. I played Mary Warren, not due to any great acting ability, but due to a then-near-eidetic audio memory.

Miller was the son of a Polish Jew, whose family came here early in the 20th century. Miller's plays -- and life -- are about ethics, particularly about persecution. The Crucible is about the fanatic persecution of the Salem witch trials, written during the McCarthy era when Miller, himself, was refusing to testify against other artists. Death of a Salesman is about a workman, let go because of age, in an era before this was illegal, leading to his suicide. Salesman is one of the few plays known to have changed history. The then-head of one of New York's largest department stores, rode home after seeing the play, and wrote a memo to all his employees, declaring that hereafter none of his store's employees would ever be let go because of age.

Here's why I like Miller: 1) He was an ethical man. 2) He consistently took courageous, even dangerous or illegal, action for what he believed in, and 3) he supported other people, and 4) he wrote good plays.

Here is the moment Miller became real to me.

I was reading Hamlet And The Baker's Son, by Brazilian theatre director, Augusto Boal. Boal is a joyous, dark, fiery, political man. His type of theatre, "Theatre of the Oppressed," evolved to cross boundaries, where theatre begins to be used in real life, as real life, even to change real life. "Legislative Theatre," which grew out of it, is a construct where people act out a situation that is being considered in court, or for political review; then the legislators vote after seeing the enactment. It has led to much more complex, profound consideration of the matter under discussion.

Brazilian director Augusto Boal, whose life Miller saved

So Boal is an increasingly powerful director, things are heating up in Brazil, and he leaves the country for a while. When he comes back, they arrest him, put him in jail, and begin to torture him. He said it was utterly surreal. First, that he would be arrested. Second, that he would be walked through a normal office full of people and computers, to get to the stairs to the dungeon. And third, that he would be tortured.

Augusto is down there, and he asks the torturers, "Why are you torturing me?" "Because you say bad things about Brazil in other countries," they said. "Like what?" he asked. "You say we torture people," they answered. And, even in jail, strung up on a metal bar, he had to laugh.

In that moment, Augusto Boal became real to me. Even in such conditions, he stayed human, curious.

"But," said the torturers, "We are torturing you with respect. Because you are a great artist." "How would you torture me without respect?" he asked. They described the difference. Indeed, it was much worse than being tortured with respect. Again, Boal had to laugh.

Two months later, Boal was no longer laughing. He was crumbling, in a Brazilian prison, being systematically tortured and broken.

Which is when Arthur Miller, an old playwright in New England who had never met him, learned what was going on. Instantly, Miller began a letter-writing campaign, and organized a world-wide letter-writing campaign to the Brazilian authorities. This saved Boal's life. He was tortured for another month, until finally, reluctantly, they released him.

THAT is the Arthur Miller I am respecting, honoring, and mourning. Because, at some level, that is the kind of person I want to become -- political, passionate, quick & fierce to act, persistent, courageous, ethical.

And, just to finish the Boal story -- two weeks after his release, he found himself at the State University of New York. "Again, utterly surreal," he said. So in the workshop, he had all the actors work with iron bars, strung up the same way he had been tortured -- though, needless to say, not long enough to hurt them. "I could only understand what had been done to me," he said, "By bringing it into my world. Into the context where I am used to investigating complicated matters."

Arthur Miller brought us into his world -- his educated, principled, persecuted, New England Yankee, Jewish world. Miller belongs to my pantheon of mostly-Polish-and-Russian theatre folk with whom I resonate so strongly.

Miller was married, with two kids, when he met Marilyn Monroe. It rocked his world. Soon, he had divorced, and married Marilyn. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," he has said of their marriage, and never renounced either truth.

Miller with his second wife, Marilyn Monroe

When their marriage dissolved, after five years or so, he married Austrian photographer Inge Morath, a dark beautiful private woman with a gift for languages, with whom he travelled to many other countries.

Miller with his third wife, Inge Morath

They traveled to Beijing where Miller directed China's first-ever production of Death Of A Salesman, soon after China's borders first opened.