Lily Janiak cites Witch Hunt as a production that changed Bay Area theatre in 2019, listed alongside shows from companies including Berkeley Rep, Shotgun Players, and San Francisco Playhouse.
The article describes Witch Hunt as part of a conscious shift in Bay Area productions’ approach to historical narratives. Numerous companies, including Those Women Productions reckoned with history’s tendency to be dictated solely by those in power, instead focusing on the historical perspectives that have, as a result, been erased.
“The way we perceive ourselves and others in the world comes in large part from the histories we’ve absorbed, but history’s victors have traditionally shaped those stories to justify their positions. Local theater this year has worked to right that imbalance, mapping the obscure and putting the marginalized at the center of historical narratives.”
“In Those Women Productions’ “Witch Hunt,” the white girls and women of the Salem witch trials took a backseat to Tituba, the Native American woman who was the first accused of witchcraft. A mother to a hero became the protagonist in “Mother of the Maid,” at Marin Theatre Company, and Asian and Asian American stories got told from within in Magic Theatre’s “The Chinese Lady,” and the Marsh’s “The Box Without a Bottom,” instead of from a white gaze, with its tendency to whitewash or exoticize.”
Read the complete story: Moments that defined Bay Area theater in 2019
