Sixth graders at the Tisbury School eagerly entered Sean DeBettencourt’s social studies classroom for the second session of Phyllis Vecchia’s Women in History Program. Her learn-by-doing approach had their artistic juices flowing as they participated in a play about the Salem witch trials of 1692–93.
Vecchia facilitated the class with aplomb, bringing 37 years of experience as a drama teacher and 27 years of running her children’s theater company. She notes, “I’m a bit of a clown, too, and I’m good at improv theater, so I can combine all that and turn it into a really fun theater class for kids.”
Vecchia began the hour with a brief review, asking the students to recall what they had learned in the previous session. One of the things they had covered was that during the Puritan era, religion dominated people’s lives, as did beliefs in superstition, magic, evil spirits, the Devil, and witches. The class learned that more than 200 people were accused, 20 were put to death, and some died in jail. If you admitted to being guilty, you were hanged, and the fungus from the rye that people ate contributed to ergot poisoning, whose symptoms, including hallucinations, muscle spasms, and convulsions, aligned with some of the behaviors observed in the afflicted.
After the review, students were ready to take on their assigned roles. First, they collected headgear that reflected their characters: black Puritan pilgrim hats for the boys and white caps for the girls. The aim of the play was not to create actors, but to have the youth truly inhabit the material. Vecchia does this by feeding the students their lines and having them mimic her dramatic flair. She shares, “A couple of years ago, I discovered that the kids were reading, but they weren’t performing. I felt this was supposed to be a theater class, but it was flat.” In contrast, DeBettencourt’s students enthusiastically delivered their lines and interacted with one another, thereby absorbing the material.
In the play, the “afflicted” girls convulsed and spoke of seeing specters of villagers who were witches, the accused denied the allegations, and the judges believed the girls. At the end of the play, the new Puritan governor of Massachusetts, Sir William Phips, came to Salem and decreed that no person could testify in court about seeing invisible spirits, since it could not be proven.
DeBettencourt ended the class with comments about the nature of the trials. “This system allowed all kinds of evidence that no one could prove, which didn’t work very well. [The new ruling] was a stepping stone toward a justice system we try to utilize today, where you are innocent until proven guilty. It’s not flawless, but it’s a step in that direction.”
Vecchia began her program when one of her children was in the eighth grade: “I was surprised they weren’t learning much about women in their social studies curriculum. I was raised in the women’s movement, and the accomplishments of women have always been important to me. What they were learning was very dated. A lot of the history books are still very old-fashioned, and women get little sidebars about their accomplishments.”
Vecchia conducts extensive research before writing her scripts. While she has developed programs about Eleanor Roosevelt, Hillary Clinton, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Phyllis Wheatley, she has also tackled lesser-known women. Examples include Marina Silva, a Brazilian politician and environmentalist currently serving as Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, and Mary Chipman Lawrence, a whaling wife from Falmouth in the 1800s. Lawrence managed bookkeeping and supplies for the ship, oversaw the crew, negotiated and established trade relations with various individuals they encountered, and participated in labor alongside the captain and crew while raising her daughter. Clara Lemlich Shavelson, the focus of another script by Vecchia, is known primarily for her role in the 1909 garment workers’ strike in New York City, often called the Uprising of the 20,000.
DeBettencourt, who has been working with Vecchia for 15 years, is passionate about the program: “It’s able to convey the critical number of women who are underrepresented in our history. Also, so many kids can’t get a core understanding of historical context just from reading and writing. The theatrical component adds quite a bit. I’ve had kids who were unable to meaningfully access the curriculum who can do so in our theater program.” He adds, “Two months from now, five months from now, next year, you’ll hear them say, ‘That’s like when we did it in the Women in History class.”
Vecchia shares, “The most important thing is to try to make it inclusive. Sometimes the teachers are surprised that these quiet kids will suddenly take part, and are just amazed that they have even raised their hands to do something. That’s the beauty of the arts: they do something magical. A kid who would not have shone can shine in something like this. I’ve been teaching long enough that I’ve seen that happen repeatedly. That’s one of the reasons I teach. I really like supporting children and seeing them open up to the arts.”
