Hello! My name is Jaci Robar, and I am a Senior at Homestead!! I like drawing/sketching, singing, and of course, acting. In “The Crucible,” I play the featured character, Ann Putnam, who, in all honesty, is very mentally unstable, and convinced that witches, wizards, and the devil himself are out for blood in Salem, Massachusetts.
I have been doing theater since the musical of my freshman year, “Cinderella,” and I fell in love with it. I love the adrenaline that rushes though my veins when I dance like there was no tomorrow on the stage, giving it all I have. I love the thrill of hearing the roaring applause of the crowd. I love every aspect of theater.
My favorite story from rehearsal is when we were doing a drill type of thing where the girls were blindfolded and walking around. The guys has to make sure that we didn’t walk into any furniture or each other. This exercise, while very helpful, also went very wrong within the first minute or so when I crashed into the forehead of Neela Bergeron, who plays “Mercy Lewis,” and because I am taller than almost all of the girls, I bit my lip, and I didn’t realize it but I was in fact bleeding. It was a very funny moment to me because literally, what the heck? It was a bonding moment with the theater kids, and funny that I had no idea.
All art comments on something and aligns itself with current issues. How does this work comment on current social or political issues and has it influenced you?
This work to me seems to speak about the injustice that women have not only faced in history but in every day to day life. Women have to perform in order to be simply respected, and they still aren’t respected. My favorite quote relating to this is “To be a woman is to perform,” because it is so important to realize that women haven’t been treated as equals to men in close to all of history.
What do you hope the audience will be thinking about in the car as they drive home after this show
Honestly, I want them to cry for the tragedy that was brought upon so many unsuspecting women of all ages, as well as some rare instances of the male wizard. This play is devastating, and I want the audience to know that what happened was horrible; I want it to hit them hard.
What’s one thing that is different in this play or rehearsal process than anything else we’ve done in the Homestead Theatre Department?
I think that “The Crucible” is so different from all of the other shows because this play ends badly; you have the musical “Cinderella,” where she gets married to Prince Charming, or “Alice in Wonderland,” Alice returns home, and “Pride and Prejudice” where Elizabeth Bennett marries Mr. Darcy; almost all of our shows end happily like everything is perfect, but the sad reality is that not everything ends well, perfect, or happily ever after. Abigail Williams wins, the antagonist of the story, and John Proctor dies, the hero. Good didn’t prevail, which is sadly akin to how life works: not everything is perfect, not everything is happy. Things can go badly, and I think that is why “The Crucible,” is such a good show for us to do; it shows that not everything ends happily, and it can end in tragedy.
I hope to see y’all at our performance of “The Crucible”! Toodeloo!!
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