2009 MSMC Senior School play 30-31 August 2009. Directed and produced by Evie Gawenda and Rachel Forgasz; Staging and Technical Production by Gideon Szental The Crucible, a historical play based on events of the Salem witchcraft trials, takes place in a small Puritan village in the colony of Massachusetts in 1692. The witchcraft trials, as Miller explains in a prose prologue to the play, grew out of the particular moral system of the Puritans, which promoted interference in others' affairs as well as a repressive code of conduct that frowned on any diversion from norms of behavior