Arthur Miller Centennial at St. Francis

By on October 14, 2015 12:03 am in Arts and Entertainment, Brooklyn Heights, Events, Theater

Former Brooklyn Heights resident, Pulitzer and multiple Tony award winner Arthur Miller (1915-2005), remembered for his plays The Crucible, Death of a Salesman, The Misfits, A View From the Bridge and many others, will be the subject of a centennial conference at St. Francis College this weekend. While tickets to the event, which includes a dramatic reading by Broadway actress, and Miller’s sister, Joan Copeland, as well as a Muslim/Syrian production of A View from the Bridge, various lectures and panel discussions, and a reception, are expensive and appear to be limited to members of the academic community and St. Francis alums (but, hey, who can’t claim to be an “Independent scholar”?), there is one event, a staged reading of Miller’s All My Sons by “On the Verge” of Ithaca College, which, according to this Eagle story, is free and open to the public. The reading takes place in Founder’s Hall, 180 Remsen Street, at 1:00 Sunday afternoon, October 18.

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  • Willow Street Watch

    This is totally amazing, not to mention totally appalling Arthur Miller a high priest of ammorality is being honored in a Catholic facility.

    What a comment on the state of the Church. Hmmm- imagine what would happen anytime prior to 1964 or even pre-francis, if someone even THOUGHT of doing something like this-

    Terribly disturbing….

  • ColumbiaHeightster

    You just have to say something negative about every single topic, don’t you? It must be miserable inside your head.

  • Willow Street Watch

    I really wish people would refrain from personal attacts and actuially speak to the issue.

    What exactly do you find faulty/wrong…or improper in my statements?

    Let me entain your question however to say that as a matter of fact I am a naturally happy content person. I am very grateful for the many gifts god has given me.

    But it is the obligation of any responsible citizen, just as it is for any honest researcher or journalist to accurately assess a condition or situation. And it is simply accurate to state that Mr Miller through his writings was one of the principal architects of the post war “new” morality/amorality movement. And as such, his being an honoree in any Catholic facility is very questionable/wrongful if not directly outragious.

    Now, without more rock throwing, what do you find in error with may statements?

  • StudioBrooklyn

    I’m largely ignorant of Miller’s work, but my understanding is that one of his most famous plays, “The Crucible”, was a criticism of the McCarthy-era “witch hunts” and by extension a criticism of the toxic way in which many Americans adopted anti-Soviet sentiments during the Cold War, turning on each other with rampant paranoia and mistrust.

    This criticism seems apt to me, and even makes me think that in writing “The Crucible” Miller might have been a man after your own heart, attempting to expose a serious societal problem where he saw one go on unchecked.

    Could you perhaps enlighten us as to what the “post war ‘new’ morality/amorality movement” is, and the ways in which Miller was one of its “principal architects”?

  • Brixtony

    You may be happy, but many of us, even when we agree with you, find that you seem to approach everything from the negative and then are very defensive about it when this is pointed out.
    In this case, you are incredibly off base with the Miller criticism.

  • Willow Street Watch

    Let me use this response to answer botyh of the above posts. The “new morality” movement had two peaks one in the 1920’s and one just after WWII. It was revived and lionized in the late 60’s till about ’71. But it was all the same false/evil/childish teaching that there was no good or evil and, by extension there was no consequences for I’ll considered behavior. In the late 1940’s Arthur Miller through his Willy Lomax et al figures preached the new morality carefully indirectly by making sympathetic figures using situation based eythics, which of course is no firm ethics standards. In this, he was a celebrated high priest for moral/ethical/sprtuial revision.

    Miller himself was ANYTHING but what Catholics, or any other ethical person or institution should celebrate. In the late 1960’s I was told by Theodore C Kirkpatric , one of the three founders of Counterattack/red channels that Miller had joined the Young Communist League in college. His famious forced appearance before HUAC in 1956 he refused to answer if he was a member or what “duties” he carried out for the cause during those and subsequent years….

  • Willow Street Watch

    There are many disturbing aspects of Arthur Miller’s life and behavior which are strongly to (pre Francis) Catholic teachings. His relationship with Michael Gold. He Married a Catholic but she was lapsed and she apparently arranged to be married by a priest but he appearently insisted it not be in a church. After this, he neatly avoided the draft. He somehow obtained a defense job in Brooklyn and began writing plays. I suggest anyone who remotely thinks that his lifelong advocacy is consistent with any genuine Catholic thought or practices simply READ what his plays contains. His friendship with communism. His concern for anti semitism at a time when communism had and was slaughtering MANY MILLIONS of Christians, many of which were Catholics. Beyond this huge reality in his history, there are many other ugly behaviors like his writing “After The Fall” shortly subsequent to the death of Marilyn Monroe. He was of course at ground zero when her life disintegrated and her drug use spiraled. None of which he apparently did anything to control. He wrote at least one fauning book about Russia with his third wife

    So, folks, how is ANY of that compatible with any aspect of Catholicism and why should ANY Catholic institution whatsoever honor this figure??