Chiara Aurelia Leads John Proctor is the Villain on Broadway Starting Tonight

Chiara Aurelia makes her Broadway debut in John Proctor is the Villain at the Booth Theatre on July 15. She takes on the lead role of Shelby Holcomb for its final weeks on Broadway, replacing original star Sadie Sink, who played her final performance as Shelby on July 13. The show runs through August 31.

John Proctor is the Villain also features Nihar Duvvuri as Mason Adams, Tony Award winner Gabriel Ebert as Carter Smith, Molly Griggs as Bailey Gallagher, Maggie Kuntz as Ivy Watkins, Hagan Oliveras as Lee Turner, Morgan Scott as Nell Shaw, Tony nominee Fina Strazza as Beth Powell and Amalia Yoo as Raelynn Nix. Rounding out the cast as understudies are Noah Pacht, Fiona Robberson, Shian Tomlinson, Garrett Young and Victoria Vourkoutiotis. 

Aurelia is widely known for her starring role as Jeanette Turner in the Freeform series Cruel Summer, for which she received a Critics Choice Nomination for Best Lead Actress in a Drama Series. She was recently seen in the off-Broadway play Dilaria.

Written by Kimberly Belflower and directed by Danya Taymor, John Proctor is the Villain earned seven 2025 Tony Award nominations, including Best Play and Best Direction of a Play, as well as performance nominations for Sink, Strazza and Ebert.

Five young women—fueled by pop music, optimism and fury—clash with their school, their Georgia town, and the stories they've been instructed to believe. As their class dissects The Crucible, they begin to question who we deem heroic, who we call a villain and who gets burned in the process. With biting humor and a beating heart, this explosive new play shines a blazing spotlight on the eternal fight to claim your own narrative in a world that’s still stuck in the past.