The Hook

A Note from the adaptor

In the language of The Hook, Arthur Miller gives the working men and women of the New York docks not just a political voice but a poetic tongue. His experience in the Navy Yard and in researching Pietro Panto’s story informs his ear and pen of how they spoke; their words spilling from the cup of language; shouldering other words aside in their haste to be said, just as the longshoremen pushed their way to the front of the Shape-Up to get a day’s work; ringing out like a shot-glass slammed on the counter of Sunny’s Bar to make a point; landing like the thump of fist against chin in a back-street brawl or like a whispered tenderness between lovers stuck in a tough place in a challenging time.

- Ron Hutchinson

Photo/video source materials used for The Hook Projection Design (edited by Beatrice Antonie Martino): selected images from "The Longshoremen," by Charles B. Barnes, Russell Sage Foundation (1915); Percy Loomis Sperr, via New York Public Library; photos of Pete Panto via The New York Times and Brooklyn Daily Eagle; images of historic New York by Vivian Maier, Courtesy of the Maloof Collection/Howard Greenberg Galleries; Al Aumuller, Roger Higgins, and alan Fisher via Library of Congress; Irving Kaufman via Brooklyn Daily Eagle; Department of Marine and Aviation Collection, NYC Municipal Archives; The Waterfront Museum; Organized Crime in America YouTube channel; Jay Dow YouTube channel; Stock Footage provided by jamejones, StereoEye, and Polaris_Visuals, from Pond5; "Port of New York" by László Benedek (Public Domain); additional videos and images by Beatrice Antonie Martino.