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What first drew you to the East Anglian witch trials, and how did your academic research evolve into writing a full-length play?

I’ve always been interested in witch trials. There’s a kind of mystery to them — a question of what really happened, of finding the reality in stories of witches and magic and the Devil. Because it’s almost never an entirely made-up account, there’s always some underlying truth, some genuine fear or conflict that becomes exaggerated into accusations of witchcraft. I like asking what witch trials can tell us about a community and the East Anglian witch hunt was the largest witch hunt England ever experienced, so I think it has a lot to tell us about people at that time. And there’s such an inherent drama to witch trials, a theatricality and strong emotions that I think works perfect for the stage, so writing The Witchfinder was a chance for me to combine my academic interest with my personal love of theatre.

The Witchfinder touches on themes of fanaticism and fear – what parallels do you see between 1645 and today’s world?

The Witchfinder follows the rise and downfall of Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General and one of the key men behind the witch trials that would see 100 people executed. He was a young man in his mid-20s who came from a privileged background, but lacked a strong sense of self and connection with other people and who felt entitled to respect from his community. He starts out with only minor involvement in investigating a witch, but is rewarded for his actions, and this encourages him to commit greater and greater acts of harm in an attempt to gain approval and respect. We see the same thing happening with young men today: boys and young men who feel alone, who find community in online chat groups or friend groups that encourage harmful or hateful behaviour (against women or racial minorities or other marginalized groups), and become radicalized. 

But it wasn’t just Hopkins behind the witch trials. Whether out of fear or personal biases or indifference, entire communities supported innocent people being imprisoned and executed for crimes they couldn’t possibly have committed. It’s easy to assume that we in the modern day are more rational than our ancestors, less likely to jump to superstition, but how sure can we really be that we would never turn against our neighbour? 

People in 1645 were dealing with many of the same issues we’re dealing with today: war, economic uncertainty, political tensions, and prejudice. People in Essex in 1645 were afraid; many people today are afraid; and fear can lead people to do terrible things. 

Writing a historical drama based on real events can be tricky – how did you balance historical accuracy with theatrical storytelling?

I wanted to be as true as possible to the real life people and events, but the trials took place over two years while The Witchfinder is about two hours, so things have to be simplified. And there are people who were involved in the East Anglian witch trials that we simply know next to nothing about. This is particularly true of the victims of witch trials. In moments where there’s just no way to be historically accurate, because we don’t know the truth, I tried to instead be historically plausible. We don’t this happened, but might it have happened? 

But what we do know about the real events of the witch trials makes for great drama. It’s people backed into a corner and fighting for their lives to convince the world they’re innocent. It’s neighbours turning against one another or emotional outbursts in a court room. And in some cases, I actually had to change real life events for The Witchfinder, because I thought: this really happened, but there’s no way anyone would believe this if I put it on stage. Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction!

The play features an ensemble cast of twelve – how did you approach directing or shaping those characters to bring out the wider story?

It was important to me from the beginning that these characters feel like real people. That just because they lived almost 400 years ago, everyone involved in the project understood these characters were just as human as we are now. And I’ve been fortunate enough to work with a brilliant cast, who have taken to their characters with such empathy and nuance!

Several of our actors are multi-roling with some playing as many as five or more characters. Some of these characters only have a handful of lines, but the cast is so talented that every single character feels like a fully-fledged, distinct human being. We’ve really focused on establishing backgrounds and motivations, regardless of whether a character has two lines or two hundred.

What was the biggest surprise you uncovered during your PhD research that found its way into the script?

The working title of my research is ‘Men and Masculinities in the East Anglian Witch Trials, 1645-1647’ and it looks at men’s experiences in the trials and how they related to other men. One of the ideas my research has been exploring is that witch hunting offered men a chance to portray themselves as heroes to their communities. For someone like Matthew Hopkins, he doesn’t have a set place in society, but in persecuting witches he is able to pass himself off as a savior and is able to form alliances with powerful men and increase his own status. So I suppose one of the surprises of my research has been just how much the East Anglian witch trials comes back to men, because on the one hand witch trials are the stories of women (who made up the majority of those accused of witchcraft), but in other respects it is a story about insecure men: men who are insecure about women, but also insecure around other men, and who harm vulnerable people in an attempt to prove their value as men to other men.

The play had a preview at UCL – how did audiences respond, and did that experience influence any changes for this full run at McQueen’s Theatre?

I wrote the original version of The Witchfinder for a festival at UCL. It was a shorter version with three characters, two witchfinders and a woman accused of witchcraft. It showed her interrogation and attempts to convince the witchfinders she was innocent.

I wasn’t sure at the time if I would develop the project further. I didn’t know if audiences would relate to it. Witches are weird, after all. But I was wrong: audiences connected with it and after the performances I had people asking what happened next or how much of the play was true. That feedback gave me the confidence to keep developing The Witchfinder.

The original version of The Witchfinder is still more or less present in the full length play, but now we see what lead up to that night and what happens after.