After almost two years as one of the most-produced plays in America, John Proctor is the Villain is finally getting a Broadway debut this Spring! The show focuses on a group of lively teens at a rural high school in Georgia who are studying The Crucible while navigating young love, sex ed, and a few school scandals. Holding a contemporary lens to the American classic, they begin to question who is really the hero and what is the truth, discovering their own power in the process. Alternately touching and bitingly funny, this new comedy captures a generation in mid-transformation, running on pop music, optimism, and fury, writing their own coming-of-age story.

No stranger to strong female characters, Kimberly Belflower wrote the play with her own rural upbringing in mind.

“It’s my heart and guts in a single play,” says Belflower. “Back in 2017/18, the tidal wave of Me Too made me think about what it would be like to grow up in my hometown—in rural Appalachian Georgia—in that moment in time. What would it be like to be a teenager in rural America, feeling the world shift underneath your feet while you’re still figuring out the person you want to be, in a place that’s steeped in tradition, in a culture that tries to make teenage girls feel as powerless as possible? How might those young women re-define their lives in real time? The things they’re taught? The books they read? The heroes they worship?” She added, “From its inception, John Proctor Is the Villain has been a play for and about young people.”

“I thought that, over time, the play would start to feel less relevant,” she said. “But if anything, this story has only felt more timely, more urgent as it’s developed.”

You can see John Proctor Is the Villain on Broadway starting March 20, 2025!