In 1996, Arthur Miller wrote in the New Yorker that he had composed his 1953 play “The Crucible” in a fearful time in America. Just a few years earlier, Sen. Joseph McCarthy had launched his witch hunt as paranoia about the spread of the Communism in China and Europe gripped the United States.

Miller said he wrote the play, at least in part, about “the paralysis that had set in among many liberals who, despite their discomfort with the inquisitors’ violation of civil rights, were fearful, and with good reason, of being identified as Communists if they should protest too strongly.”

“Gradually,” Miller wrote, “all the old political and moral reality had melted like a Dali watch. Nobody but a fanatic, it seemed, could really say all that he believed.” The Waterford High School drama program has performed “The Crucible” before, in 2009, according to director Shane Valle. Valle said he chose the play then only because it’s a common production for high school troupes to take on. But, he said, this year the idea of a melted political and moral reality seemed too apt to pass up.

“It’s a show that deals with themes such as fear and intolerance, and hysteria,” Valle said. “I thought in today’s society we’re dealing with a lot of that same stuff right now.” Valle has adapted the play, set in Salem, Mass., in 1692 during the witchcraft trials, with modern dress and sets. The teenage girls accused of witchcraft use laptops and dress like teenagers in 2017 New England.

But the depiction of the witch hunts, initially meant as a criticism of the spell that McCarthyism had spread over 1950’s America, still resonates, Valle said.

“I felt it was just a timely thing for the students to be able to to discuss those topics in their world,” Valle said.

Senior Nathaniel Rowe, who plays the lead role of John Proctor in Waterford’s production, said he sees the parallels.

“In politics over past nine to 12 months...there’s a lot of mob mentality,” he said. “Someone says something and everyone believes it.”

The cast also includes five Waterford High School teachers and staff members playing older characters.

“I think it’s pretty neat for the students to interact with their teachers outside of the classroom,” Valle said.

Isabel Umland, a senior, said she has taken on the role of Elizabeth Proctor by trying to relate the emotions of a 17th century wife and mother to the lives of many modern women.

“It’s really hard to identify with a mother who lives in puritan England,” she said. “I’m trying to approach her as someone who has a lot of internalized emotion...and is not allowed to express that emotion.”

Umland read ‘The Crucible’ last year and watched her older sister act in a local production, and said she “fell in love” with the play.

“I think Shane’s main intention...really was to show the problems with mass hysteria in our world, and the dangers of alienating a certain group of people to the extent that people start getting actually hurt,” she said.

Showings are at 7 p.m., Thursday, Friday and Saturday at Waterford High School, 20 Rope Ferry Road. Tickets are $12 for adults and $7 for students if purchased in advance or $15 for adults and $10 for students if purchased at the door.

m.shanahan@theday.com