TDF Stages

Playwright Kimberly Belflower and dramaturg Lauren Halvorsen on how their collaboration paved the way for Broadway's hit new play

Even though playwrights and dramaturgs work together closely, they don't always get along. A sort of literary facilitator, dramaturgs tread a fine line—where do their contributions end and the writers' work begin? That can lead to conflict, but thankfully not for the duo collaborating on John Proctor is the Villain, now at Broadway's Booth Theatre. Playwright Kimberly Belflower and dramaturg Lauren Halvorsen have been on the same page from the start, and their partnership has played a big part in show's success.

"Dramaturgs are my favorite," Belflower says. "If I wasn't a playwright, I would be a dramaturg."

Set in 2018 in the wake of #MeToo, John Proctor is the Villain centers on a group of honors English students (led by Sadie Sink from Netflix's Stranger Things) at a rural Georgia high school grappling with accusations of sexual misconduct in their community. Their beloved instructor Mr. Smith (Tony winner Gabriel Ebert) leads a unit on Arthur Miller's The Crucible as the bad behavior of the men in town comes to light, prompting the young women in the class to radically rethink both that classic play and their worldviews.

Filled with Gen Z slang and pop bops, John Proctor is the Villain is fun and frequently hilarious. Yet it has some very serious points to make about "how the patriarchy and other systems of power are built to perpetuate themselves over time," Belflower explains. "It's the intersection of the personal and the political and how that manifests with these teenage girls and their teacher."

Belflower's play is one of several recent feminist shows written in response to Arthur Miller plays but John Proctor is the Villain is the first to make it to Broadway. It's also one of the few new Broadway plays this season to employ a dramaturg.

Halvorsen, who describes her role as "a collaborative editor and an early audience member," came across an early draft of John Proctor is the Villain six years ago when she was working as a reader at a literary office. It immediately stood out.

"It had this beautiful sincerity that never felt cloying," Halvorsen recalls. "But what made me so attracted to it was how it felt like we shared the same cultural lexicon."

Halvorsen sent Belflower a direct message via Twitter raving about the script. "The way that Lauren talked about the play, it was so clear to me that she got my writing and got what I was going for," Belflower says.

At the time, Halvorsen was the in-house dramaturg at Studio Theatre in Washington, DC. She introduced Belflower to her colleagues and advocated for the show to be programmed at the theatre. It was set to premiere in 2020 when COVID hit. Overnight, the production was postponed and Halvorsen was laid off as the world shut down.

When John Proctor is the Villain finally debuted at Studio Theatre in 2022, Halvorsen was unable to be involved. Both women were heartbroken. Yet Halvorsen continued to champion the play from the sidelines.

"I would have totally gotten it if she had been like, 'I need to distance myself from this play.'" Belflower acknowledged. "But never once was that the case."

When the play's next production was announced for Boston's Huntington Theatre in 2024, Belflower had a very specific goal: to streamline the script so she could eliminate the intermission. She wanted the cuts to be imperceptible, and she knew she needed Halvorsen's help.

Together, they removed more than 12 minutes, successfully turning it into a taut one-act or, as Halvorsen describes it, "one total wild roller-coaster ride." Through what Halvorsen calls "very small, precise cuts," they ratcheted up the tension while maintaining the play's style and integrity. When Belflower's agent came to see the show, he couldn't even figure out what had been excised.

When the Broadway mounting became a reality, Belflower told director Danya Taymor and the producers that she wanted Halvorsen to be part of it. According to Belflower, "It is an unusual thing for most projects [to have a dramaturg], but they did not even question it."

By then, Halvorsen was making a name for herself as a theatrical truth teller with Nothing for the Group, a highly successful and well-respected Substack that's a combination of news, show announcements and her forthright take on the issues and injustices plaguing the industry.

Halvorsen began Nothing for the Group during the pandemic shutdown as a way to keep track of what was happening across the country during what she describes as "such a pivotal time in the American theatre." Arts workers were calling for pay equity, antiracist practices and updated safety protocols, but Halvorsen noticed little coverage of these demands. So she decided to report on the sea change herself. Her insightful newsletters are read widely by theatre-makers and lovers alike as she chronicles the closing and contracting of nonprofits, what she dubs the "regional theatre game of thrones" as different artistic leaders cycle in and out, and whether various theatrical job postings are paying a living wage. She also shares perceptive commentary, like her ongoing analysis of the Trump administration's impact on the Kennedy Center, and highlights new productions and plays.

"There was so much work happening around this country that I felt didn't get the type of visibility it needed," she explains. "How could I be a true resource for that? That's where the newsletter really came from, and I think that's what's been, to this day, the most meaningful thing about it. I really like seeing it as a tool and a service to the field."

As a dramaturg helping to birth new plays by emerging writers, Halvorsen understands how challenging it is to get a play off the ground… not to mention to Broadway.

"Writers and artists still need spaces in which they can take risks and don't have to worry about having some sort of tangible product," she notes. "It's unfortunate that a lot of those spaces have slowly been shuttering over the last few years. How can we replicate that necessity in other forms?"

One answer might lie in John Proctor is the Villain's road to Broadway, a journey that started at schools (the play was developed through the Farm Theater's College Collaboration Project at Kentucky's Centre College, South Carolina's Furman University and Florida's Rollins College) and regional theatres.

"I'm so thrilled and grateful that my play is now on this level, but it came from educational theatre," Belflower notes. "When a school in Kentucky did the first production, I knew The New York Times was not going to be in the audience. It was very liberating to have that pressure removed!"

Something else unique about John Proctor is the Villain's path: Although it's only debuting on Broadway now, many universities have already mounted the play, including Skidmore, UMass Amherst and the University of Michigan. In fact, many of the young fans who greet the actors at the stage door after the show already have a personal connection to the play because they performed it at their schools.

Halvorsen and Belflower are particularly thrilled that the play is resonating with a new generation of theatregoers on Broadway and beyond. After all, they are the industry's future artists and audiences. "Young people like this play, and they know this play," Belflower says. "It's for and about them."

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