John Proctor Is the Villain
- Performed 2024
- UTC Theatre Company
- Venue: Chattanooga Fine Arts Center’s Dorothy Hackett Ward Theatre
- Chattanooga, TN
- Matthew Patrick
- Lillyana Reggio
- Maislynne Payne
- Caton Taylor
- Eli Nelson
- Olimaris Martinez
- Cameron Branch
- Kaylee Payne
- Ellen Rich
- Anne K. Swedberg | Director
- Katie Forrester & Lyric Boals | Asst. Directors
- Emma Laine Hoffbauer | Scenic Designer
- Taylor Busch | Costume Designer
- Alex Miller-Long | Lighting and Sound Designer
- Conard Belitz | Stage Manager
- Eric Lindley & Karis Richardson | Asst. Technical Directors
- Katherine Forrester | Choreographer / Fight Captain
- Anne K. Swedberg | Intimacy Coordinator
- Will Snyder/BattleKat Combat | Combat Coordinator
Dedication
The UTC Theatre company wishes to dedicate this production of John Proctor Is the Villain to our inspirational professor, mentor, colleague, and friend, Professor Gaye Jeffers.
Professor Jeffers was an early reader of playwright Kimberly Belflower’s script and had hoped to direct the UTC Theatre Company’s production of the play this spring. She was a gifted theatre artist whose support opened doors for many of her students.
Production History for John Proctor Is the Villain
Playwright Kimberly Belflower grew up in a rural Georgia community much like the “one-stoplight” town of her play, John Proctor Is the Villain. She graduated with her MFA degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 2017. With a grant supporting early-career playwrights creating material for college and university theatres, and with current events in mind, Belflower wrote about a high school honors English class studying Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, during the spring semester of 2018.
The Play’s Core Conflict: Belflower’s fictional Helen County high school students examine The Crucible with a fresh perspective that is questioned and tested when applied to their own lives.
John Proctor Is the Villain was workshopped at Centre College in Kentucky in 2018 and first produced there in 2019, followed by productions at Furman University and Rollins College. Since then, nearly one hundred other colleges and universities have brought the play to their stages.
At the regional level, The Studio Theatre in Washington, DC, produced the show in 2022, followed by The Huntington Theatre in Boston in 2024. Belflower’s agent shared the script for John Proctor Is the Villain with actor Sadie Sink, whose support led to the Broadway production at the Booth Theatre featuring Sink in the role of Shelby Holcomb. Meanwhile, Kimberly Belflower continues to teach at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, where she is an assistant professor of dramatic writing.
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s Fine Arts Center brought a bold, contemporary pulse to the Dorothy Hackett Ward Theatre stage with the UTC Theatre Co. production of Kimberly Belflower’s “John Proctor Is the Villain.” The performance offered an electric, deeply authentic look into the lives of young people navigating the complexities of the modern world.
A Blazingly Intelligent Contemporary Story While the production took place during the 2024–2025 season, the play itself captured a uniquely current cultural zeitgeist, running at UTC concurrently with its own highly anticipated Broadway debut. Belflower’s script masterfully blends humor, teenage angst, and sharp drama, exploring universal themes of power, gender inequality, and the fierce strength of female solidarity. It serves as a striking reflection on how young people find their collective voice when challenging inherited narratives.
The story unfolds at a rural high school in Georgia, where a class of lively teenagers is studying Arthur Miller’s classic play The Crucible. As they examine the historical text, they simultaneously navigate the messy realities of young love, high school scandals, and sex education. Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Acting Concentration, Anne Swedberg, noted the significance of staging the piece, emphasizing how beautifully it captures the raw, unfiltered, and three-dimensional reality of teenage life without ever falling into one-dimensional stereotypes.
Kimberly Belflower: Reimagining the Canon Playwright Kimberly Belflower has earned widespread critical acclaim for her ability to write with immense nuance and emotional depth. Originally commissioned by The Farm Theater’s College Collaboration Project, “John Proctor Is the Villain” was uniquely designed with undergraduate theatre departments in mind, building its powerful reputation across university and regional stages before making its triumphant march to New York.
(Anne K.) Swedberg highlighted how meaningful it was to bring this specific work to Chattanooga. The play carries a unique local resonance, and its production at UTC was lovingly dedicated to the memory of late Professor Gaye Jeffers, a beloved colleague who had been an early, passionate reader of Belflower’s script. By blending a sharp, feminist lens with a poignant regional setting, the production invited the audience to re-examine who we crown as heroes, who we label as victims, and what happens when the truth finally comes to light.
A Collaborative Student Production Because seven of the play’s nine characters are high school juniors, the UTC Theatre Co. production provided a rare and exciting opportunity for undergraduate theatre students to portray characters right within their own generational age range. The cast brought an infectious energy and a fierce, organic chemistry to the stage, navigating the script’s difficult subject matter with incredible artistry, maturity, and surprising wit.
Behind the scenes, the collaborative spirit of the department was on full display. A dedicated student production crew—including stage managers, assistant technical directors, and a hands-on costume shop team—worked within tight timelines to bring the Georgia high school setting vividly to life. Their collective hard work ensured the production was a resounding, thought-provoking success for the UTC community.
