The Humanist Project is raising money to create and produce a new  comedy called A Crucible: A Puritantical Celebration of Witches and Turkeys, featuring those lovable idiots from Massachusetts; The Danvers Onions! We’re raising money in order to create this new comedy and bring it to the New York Frigid. Sometimes known as The New York Fringe. These funds will pay for everything from entering the festival to creating the play itself.

Get ready for “A Crucible: a puritanical celebration of Witches and Turkeys”! 

It’s Thanksgiving and The Danvers Onion Town Community Players are back and ready  for their bi-annual production of Arthur Miller’s great American Classic The Crucible. A Crucible is a mix of holidays and a splash of stupid. Don't miss this unique blend of entertainment and social commentary! 
  A very merry, happy spooky thanksgiving day celebration of women, food, villainous men and why America loves a good augment. A Crucible.

Arthur Miller, the great American playwright. He wrote The Crucible. A story about witch hunts in early America. We will not be performing The Crucible. Instead, we will be performing a play about a group of townspeople who get together every year to produce a version of The Crucible. Emphasis on a version, you might even call it A Crucible. This will be their story. The story of their rehearsals and ultimately also a story of modern day witch hunts. We need you to support us. Please give to our project. The money will go to the purchasing of costumes, props, the renting of rehearsal spaces, and the paying of designers and also of the actors and the director. Please consider donating. The story of witch hunts has never been more relevant, and we would love to simultaneously make you laugh and think and maybe even cry, just a little bit. Come on down for a wild, Puritanical turkey romp at A Crucible.

Please donate

What happens when a group of local well meaning idiots decide to rehearse a great American classic? 

We will only know after you have clicked the donation button. 

Our story is one of ignorance. Of silliness. Of assumptions. Of deception. And ultimately, witch hunts. Lots and lots of witch hunts. 

We need you to donate to this absurd, wild romp for the sake of much needed series of back-to-back belly laughs. Hit the button for the sake of freedom and laughter and we’ll see you at the show!

Devising a play can mean many things depending on who you ask. For the ensemble of A Crucible: A Puritanical Celebration of Witches and Turkeys, it begins with an image of the Danvers Onions - 6 clowns from Danvers Massachusets - getting together to put up their annual production of “A Crucible” written by Bart Miller. 

With this image in mind, we start playing games. We build this world through an exploration of images and improv games.

We use flashcards and write down “provocations” (suggestions, ideas or offers from the ensemble). These provocations can range from relevant historical facts, references to pop culture, images, comedic moments, character relationships, dramatic moments, and even dream sequences. Some cards will make it into the final piece, many will not.

We research fervently (and constantly), write scenes, and storyboard the plot until we have a working script. Then we put our “fearless editor” hats on and make many tough choices and painful edits to help strengthen the script.

We will stage the entire show while continuing to edit and create. The ideas typically do not stop flowing until hours before curtain on opening night. It is an extremely exciting and creative process, and we can’t wait to share the outcome!

Four weeks! That's the amount of time we will have to complete our devising process, get off book, and rehearse for the show. In that one month we will have moved the show from ideas to a staged reality. We've done it before so we know it works! The time frame gives us some extra juice to produce a show that carries the vitality of improvisation but still with the careful tuning of the editing process. It may seem brief, but we know the score because we've been there before, and with your help we can make this happen!!!

We are participating in the New York City Fringe (formally the FRIGID Fringe Festival). It is a theater festival that gives artists an opportunity to let their ingenuity thrive in an environment that values freedom of expression and artistic determination. In true support of the Indie Theater Community. FRIGID New York is an independent, non-profit theater company operating UNDER St Marks Theater, an off-off-Broadway venue in the East Village.

A crucible is defined as:

1: a severe test… He's ready to face the crucible of the Olympics.

2: a place or situation in which concentrated forces interact to cause or influence change or development… His character was formed in the crucible of war.

Or sometimes as
3: a vessel of a very refractory (see REFRACTORY entry 1 sense 3) material (such as porcelain) used for melting and calcining a substance that requires a high degree of heat

There’s something in the fabric of the United States that sets people arguing with each other. In the 50s the Red Scare of Communism set neighbor reporting on neighbor.   Originally, Arthur Miller used The Crucible's witch hunts to comment on the political and social climate in the United States at the time. Today, folks are as polarized as ever. Neighbors, families, loved ones find themselves on opposite sides of issues so many issues is difficult to keep track. And what happens when a group of folks from opposite ends of thought gather together to celebrate the holidays? The result is a hysterical, sometimes historical romp call A Crucible: a Puritanical Celebration of Witches and Turkeys. Cause right now what our community needs most is a good laugh. 

The Humanist Project is a Brooklyn-based theater company with a mission to recenter play in Performance and asks the artis to bring their full self to our work, play and our lives. Folks at The Humanist Project strive to provide exceptional actor training while emphasizing the importance of centering play at the heart of the work. Michael F. Toomey, The Humanist Project's Artistic Director and master clown teacher is directing A Crucible and is the catalyst for the show's creation.

Our team needs to raise $10,000 to make this show happen. The largest portion of these funds will go to paying for the entrance fee into The New York Fringe, securing rehearsal studios, which both come with hefty fees in New York City. Beyond that, we'll use what we raise to build our set, to costume our actors, to create a soundscape for our world, and to light our stage. Plus, we need to compensate the artists! Your Donation will help us accomplish all of this! 

We are asking all that are willing and able to help us make this show happen by donating anything you can. Any donation is tax deductible, and donations $10 and over come with a slew of rewards. Let's put it this way- if 500 of you donated about what you would pay for a salad and an oat milk latte in New York City, which is (let's face it), approximately $25, we would reach our goal. You won't regret it.