Salem Witch Trials on Stage: Nicole Brooks on Obeah Opera

Most people meet Tituba through Arthur Miller. Nicole Brooks met her differently. The Canadian artist, producer, composer, and performer spent over a decade creating Obeah Opera, a fully sung a cappella theatrical work that centers Tituba and the other women of Salem as healers, wise women, and people who loved and were loved. In this conversation Nicole opens up about the research, the music, the controversy, and the story she believes America is ready to hear.

What You Will Learn

• Who Tituba was beyond The Crucible

• Why Nicole positions every woman in the story as a healer

• How the word Obeah appears in Puritan records and what that tells us

• The love story at the heart of Obeah Opera

• How the girls who made accusations were themselves silenced and powerless

• What Tituba's name means in Yoruba

• Why an all-female cast changes how the story lands

• How music makes the heaviest history bearable

Guest Nicole Brooks, creator of Obeah Opera

Resources and Links 

Sign the Petition to Exonerate the Boston 8

The History of Witch Trial Exonerations in Massachusetts

About the MA Witch Hunt Justice Project

Purchase a MA Witch Hunt Justice Project Memorial Pin