I remember when I was doing 'The Crucible' on Broadway with Laura Linney, and Arthur Miller had been in rehearsal with us and was on stage on opening night. She turned to me during the curtain call and said, 'Let's make sure we remember this.'
'Crucible' was going to be a 'passing of the torch' story. So something that was big enough to be worthy of that, that could show these characters being changed - along with their respective outlooks about life, the galaxy, and the Force - was Mortis.
If American literature has a few heroes, Miller is one of them. He refused to name names at the McCarthy hearings, and his play 'The Crucible' analysed the hearings in the context of a previous American mass psychosis, the Salem witch trials.
No, the real American has not yet arrived. He is only in the Crucible, I tell you - he will be the fusion of all races, perhaps the coming superman.
Men and women whose early youth was shaped in the ordeal of the Great Depression showed the values formed in that crucible when tyranny threatened a world.
America is God's Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming!
When the Negro cries with pain from his deep hurt and lays his petition for elemental justice before the nation, he is calling upon the American people to kindle about that crucible of race relationships the fires of American faith.
Look, this job has always been a crucible of conflict.
As minorities and other immigrant groups become more important to our economy, the inner city is a crucible that gives us an early look at phenomena that are going to be spreading more broadly in the economy over time.
As any opera fan knows, lawyers and judges do not fare well in most operas. Just consider the productions of 'Andrea Chenier,' 'Aida, Norma,' 'Billy Budd,' 'Peter Grimes,' 'The Crucible,' 'Lost in the Stars,' 'The Marriage of Figaro,' 'The Makropulos Case' and Wagner's 'Ring' cycle. Around 1810, the theme of justice emerged in opera.