Arthur Miller's THE HOOK Comes to Brooklyn's Brave New World Repertory Theatre

Brooklyn's Brave New World Repertory Theatre will present the American premiere of Arthur Miller’s unpublished screenplay, The Hook, adapted for the stage by Brooklyn-based writer Ron Hutchinson with UK director James Dacre, and directed by Claire Beckman, co-founder and producing artistic director of BNW Rep. The immersive setting will be onboard the barge of The Waterfront Museum moored in Red Hook. Performances are set over three weekends, June 9 through June 25 at 8pm.

Based on true events that took place on the Red Hook docks in the late 1930's, The Hook was inspired by the real-life story of Pete Panto, a young South Brooklyn longshoreman who after leading a revolt against corrupt union leadership, mysteriously disappeared, to be found years later murdered by The Mob.

The screenplay’s backstory is rooted in controversy and delays, reaching from the corruption Miller tracked along the working waterfront in the nation’s biggest port to the rejection he faced when he refused to buckle to Columbia Pictures. When studio heads demanded the systemic corruption on the docks be attributed to Communism instead of The Mob, Miller pulled the plug, refusing to write “Red Scare” propaganda. He wrote A View From The Bridge instead.

Beckman says that The Hook languished for almost 70 years so “Brave New World Rep is proud as hell to be the ones who get to set the story straight, and in this very first American production, do it where it took place – on the waterfront in Red Hook, using projection design and original music by composer Michelle DiBucci to evoke a nightmarish, claustrophobic sense of entrapment and paranoia.” She says that Miller never finished his screenplay “so the adaptors have taken on the arduous task of making it work for the stage, turning a large gang of longshoremen into fewer individual characters with individual viewpoints, while staying true to Miller’s original screenplay set in the 1950s and having the characters speak only Miller’s lines from the original script and script notes. It’s a tribute to Pete Panto, who paid the ultimate price for fighting corruption on the docks, and to Arthur Miller, who never saw his story realized in Red Hook, where it was meant to be told.”

Beckman says “We’re very grateful to a disparate group of artists who helped make this production possible. Special thanks go to David Sharps, captain of The Waterfront Museum, who brought it to us; and to Patrick Connellan, the designer who first got his hands on the screenplay (thanks to the Miller Estate), and spearheaded the world premiere in North Hampton, UK in 2015.”

BNW Rep and Beckman have a long history with Arthur Miller, arguably Brooklyn's greatest 20th century playwright. The company has previously produced acclaimed productions of three other Miller classics: The Crucible in 2010, The American Clock in 2011, and A View From the Bridge in 2018, then remounted in 2019. 

Beckman says “The ‘hook’ of the title is Red Hook, Brooklyn. It is also the classic tool of a longshoreman; an extension of his arm, a claw for gripping heavy crates and sacks of goods - or for use in a fight. The play gives a closer look at the tightly knit working class community doing the dangerous work of loading and unloading the ships. Back-breaking work which made New York the world's richest and most important harbor.”

Photo Credit: Jody Christopherson