YOUNG WOMAN. Do you get used to, it—so after a while it doesn’t matter? Or don’t you? Does it always matter? You ought to be in love, oughtn’t you, Ma? You must be in love, mustn’t you, Ma? That changes everything, doesn’t it—or does it? Maybe if you just like a person it’s all right—is it? When he puts a hand on me, my blood turns cold. But your blood oughtn’t to run cold, ought it? His hands are—his hands are fat, Ma—don’t you see—his hands are fat—and they sort of press—and they’re fat—don’t you see?—Don’t you see? A novel with a focus on Women in the Mexican Revolution, informed by Treadwell's interview with Pancho Villa almost a decade prior. [1]

one-act [2] set in a NY apartment and the characters are dancer Senorita Viviana Ybarra y De La Guerra, businessman John S. Watkins, and musician Senor Alvaredos. The subject matter of the play is both domestic and romantic [5] a one-act later renamed Sympathy, it is a stage adaptation of the serial How I Got My Husband and How I Lost Him. [3] Sympathy was the first of Treadwell's plays to be produced, in San Francisco. [2] This 3-character one-act is set in an apartment and the characters are Jean Traig, a performer, Mori, her servant, and a Man; the play has romantic and economic themes. [5]

Sophie Treadwell’s 1928 expressionist drama Machinal is an exploration of boundaries and excess, of the ways in which the everyday is pushed into the realm of extraordinary and exceptional as “an ordinary woman, any woman” is influenced by social and psycho-emotional processes to violently murder her husband. Machinal is both loosely based on the widely-reported and sensationalized murder trial of Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray, which led to the first sentencing of a woman in America to execution via electric chair, and a feminist piece technically echoing and responding to Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine. The soundscape of the play is distinctive, and rhythm is used to contrast mechanization and modernity with organic and embodied qualities of personal freedom and grace. The work is both fast-paced and cacophonous; dialogue between primary characters is discursively disrupted in shifting intervals. In Britain, the play was first performed under the title The Life Machine in 1931. [7] Reception [ edit ]

Stenographer is an unnamed, dry female character who, in the first episode, helps emphasize and embellish the noises of the office as she audibly recites portions of stale, business letters. Wynn, Nancy. “Sophie Treadwell: The Career of a Twentieth-Century American Feminist Playwright.” Diss. The City University of New York, 1982. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. Web.is convincing and powerful. It could be reasoned that Helen’s mother’s pressure is the catalyst that forces Helen into marriage, motherhood, and, eventually, murder. Sophie Treadwell was a campaigning journalist in America between the wars. Among her assignments was the sensational murder involving Snyder, who with her lover, Judd Gray, had murdered her husband and gone to the electric chair. In Episode Two, Helen sits in a kitchen with her mother. The two women argue about the meal, and Helen tells her mother that George wants to marry her. At first, her mother is skeptical, but once she learns George is wealthy, she encourages Helen to move forward with the idea. “I can’t, Ma! I can’t!” Helen says. “I don’t love him.” Her mother scoffs at this, saying, “Love!—what does that amount to! Will it clothe you? Will it feed you? Will it pay the bills?” Still, Helen complains that George’s hands are fat and that he’s constantly “pressing” on her, but her mother waves this away, calling her crazy. “Ma,” Helen exclaims, “if you tell me that again I’ll kill you!” She then breaks into a short monologue, admitting that perhaps she is crazy before eventually asking for her mother’s forgiveness. At the end of the scene, she decides to marry George, and the lights go off and faint jazz plays into Episode Three.

On the Mainstage - Machinal". Muhlenberg College. Muhlenberg College Theatre and Dance . Retrieved 12 February 2019.A production of Machinal was translated and adapted in Filipino ("Makinal") by thesis students in the University of the Philippines Diliman, in April 2019.

a b c d e f g h i "Sophie Treadwell". Internet Broadway Database. The Broadway League . Retrieved March 25, 2015. In episode eight, Helen is in the courtroom on trial for the murder of her husband, George H. Jones. The Lawyer for the Prosecution is prosecuting her on the charges of murder in the first degree. Parent, Jennifer. “Arthur Hopkins’ Production of Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal.” The Drama Review, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Spring 1982), pp. 87-100

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Machinal is a 1928 play by American playwright and journalist Sophie Treadwell, inspired by the real-life case of convicted and executed murderer Ruth Snyder. Its Broadway premiere, directed by Arthur Hopkins, is considered one of the highpoints of Expressionist theatre on the American stage. Treadwell remained widely unknown and un-talked about in the world of theatre scholarship until select feminist scholars resuscitated interest in her works following revivals of Machinal in 1990 by the New York Shakespeare Festival and in 1993 by the Royal National Theatre in London. [3] Resources and further reading [ edit ] Part of the play’s modernist audacity is in the soundscape Treadwell specifies. Clattering typewriters, deafening construction, the radio’s incessant chat and croon. They might suggest a metropolis bustling with opportunity – but they oppress the heroine, drowning her voice and squeezing her thoughts. To Turner, they “evoke a machine working at full speed”. a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t "North American Women's Drama". Alexander Street Press. 2004 . Retrieved August 2, 2022. Treadwell is credited with writing at least 39 plays, [3] numerous serials and journalistic articles, short stories, and several novels. The subjects of her writings are as diverse as the mediums she was writing in. Many of Treadwell's works are difficult to obtain and the majority of her plays have not previously been produced.