In 1692, Salem was the site of probably the most infamous ‘witch trials’ in North America. The playwright and screenwriter Zora Howard is giving a stage to one of the first accused in a rousing monologue: Tituba, a slave. Tituba had largely been forgotten by history before she became sadly renowned thanks to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. In The Master’s Tools, she resists the many masters who have claimed her story for themselves – Tituba becomes the mistress of her own legend. There emerges a figure between horror and humour, between good and evil, with new words and new tools. For, as writer and activist Audre Lorde put it, ‘the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house‘.
