Sophie Treadwell’s MACHINAL
A Dramaturgical Dramaturgical Play Guide
By Andrew Frank
Nancy Finn World Drama II 28 February 2012
Playwright Biography Sophie Anita Treadwell was born on October 3, 1885 of Mexican-European descent in Stockton, CA to parents, Alfred B. Treadwell and Nettie Fairchild Treadwell. Her father specifically played an estranged role in Sophie’s life, having left the family when Sophie was six years old to pursue his career as a prosecutor and judge in San Francisco (although Nettie planned to divorce Alfred in 1893, legal complications would prevent this act from happening). As the sole provider, her mother worked jobs managing a boarding house, assisting in an asylum, and serving as a caregiver for an invalid. After high school, Sophie started her college education at the University of California at Berkeley – where she began to regularly perform in the campus drama club. Suffering from financial distress in her senior year, she began work in the circulation department of the San Francisco Call. Upon her receipt of a Bachelor of Letters degree (with a French emphasis) in 1905, Treadwell took a job that fall teaching students in a school in a mining town in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, where she wrote her first play, Le Grand Prix (1907), followed by her second play, a comedy called, The Right Man (1908), the following summer while working as a nanny to two young girls at a cattle ranch in Modoc, CA. Deciding to try her luck making it in the vaudeville industry, Sophie moved to Los Angeles where she received a booking at the Fischer’s Theatre, singing three songs as a character artist. But, after a copy of her play, Le Grand Prix , was well-received by drama critic, Constance Skinner, Sophie was hired as Skinner’s t ypist and (with the recommendation of Skinner) began work living in Orange County and assisting Polish actress, Helena Modjeska, in the typing of her memoirs. With Modjeska’s encouragement and mentorship, Sophie began submitting her plays to New York theatre managers under a male pseudonym – to hopefully gain, in Modjeska’s eyes, more “seriousness.” Upon moving back to San Francisco in the summer of 1908 to attend to her ill mother, she was hired as a writer and drama critic at the San Francisco Bulletin, whereupon she met sports writer and humorist, William O. Geehan, whom she would later marry two years later on January 27, 1910. But, six months upon entering her matrimony, after a sudden loss in weight, Sophie was sent by her newlywed husband to the St. Helena Sanitarium – where she would be deemed as suffering from “neurasthenia” a nervous disorder apparently attributed those plagued with “extreme moral laxity or sensitivity”
(apparently susceptible especially to women). In fact, her relationship with sanitariums would be dramatized years later in one of her most well-known pieces, For Saxophone (1934). Sophie was at the heart of a controversy in the year 1914, with her serial investigation into San Francisco prostitution, where she dressed as a homeless prostitute and investigated how much local charity organizations helped women in need – a story that became the basis of her first produced play, Sympathy (1915). By 1914, Sophie had become a respected national journalist and during WWI, she became the first American woman to act as a foreign war correspondent reporting from all over France. She became a member of the Lucy Stony League where she acted as a major advocate for women’s suffrage and marched on the New York legislature with a petition. She became pitted at the heart of a major copyright dilemma in the year 1920, when Treadwe ll discovered that actor John Barrymore’s wife apparently plagiarized a play she conceived for Barrymore based on the life of Edgar Allen Poe – eventually to become Plumes in the Dust (1936). Through all this, she continued her work as a journalist and was sent in 1920 by the New York Herald to Mexico to cover the Mexican Revolution, and in 1921, became the only American journalist granted access to interview revolutionary Pancho Villa that August (which would become the subject of her play, Gringo written in 1922 and her first novel, Lusita, in 1931). After a summer retreat in Pleaseantville, NY with newly emigrated Richard Boleslavsky, a student of Konstantin Stanislavsk y’s new acting “system,” Treadwell wrote a comedy about a Midwest actress entitled O Nightengale, which was picked up and produced on Broadway in 1925. And it was in the year 1927, Treadwell saw the trial of Long Island housewife Ruth Snyder’s murder of her husband, co-conspired with her lover, Judd Gray. From this, Treadwell began to write a new play, Machinal - to become her masterpiece. After a trip to see Machinal performed in Moscow in 1933, her husband, McGeehan would die that year, as well as her mother – which led her back to her inherited Stockton ranch in 1937, where she continued to write and revise new plays and novels. In 1949, Treadwell decided to adopt a child, a German boy named William, who was primarily raised by nanni es, Sophie’s friends, and boarding school teachers, while Treadwell continued to travel from Stockton, to her main home in Connecticut, as well as to Mexico, Vienna, and Spain. In 1965, Treadwell settled in Tuscon, Arizona, where she wrote her final play, Woman with Lilies, an ill-received piece produced by the University of Arizona. Upon her death on February 20, 1970, Treadwell announced her copyrights to be assigned to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson – with all proceeds benefiting the education of N ative American youth. It wasn’t until five years later that the University of Arizona Library Special Collections released her works to researchers.
MACHINAL Cast List
Plot Summary The sound of noises from the typing machines in the office of George H. Jones. After “Miss A” (The Young Woman) arrives late to work as usual, she is called into Mr. Jones’s office and her co- workers gossip about the prospect of the Young Woman’s engagement to Mr. Jones. Upon her return to her desk, she turns down Telephone Girl’s offer to go on a double date, saying she has to take care of her mother. When Mr. Jones walks by and touches her shoulder, Sophie flinches, and despite her co-workers acclaiming the life of luxury a marriage to Mr. Jones would entail, the Young Woman utters her disgust at the t hought of Mr. Jones’s fat hands and bearing his children – recalling the suffocation she felt on the subway train earlier that morning. She cries to her mother, to somebody, something, for help. At dinner, Young Woman interrupts her mother’s nagging with announcing Mr. Jones’s proposal – the mother is at once extremely interested in the prospect of Mr. Jones’s wealth as a company Vice President. The Young Woman explains that, while she feels repulsion by Mr. Jones, she longs to marry as she feels she can no longer support her mother on her own. Her Mother calls her crazy; the Young Woman says she will kill herself if her Mother repeats that word. Mother cries as the radio plays and Young Woman washes the dishes (wearing rubber gloves to protect her “pretty hands”). In the courtyard, a mother yells at her child, lovers meet, a baby cries, a husband goes out for the night, and another husband sexually advances on his wife. In the bedroom at a hotel, the Husband laughs at the Young Woman for refusing to shut the window shade and for fearing undressing. After being persuaded to go the bathroom to undress, the Husband speaks of his joy at living a more relaxed life. In the darkened room, the Husband advances on the Young Woman; she begins to cry and call for her Mother. After giving birth, the Young Woman laments in a hospital room – the sounds of a new hospital wing being built are heard. The Young Woman refuses to eat, speak, or nurse her new child. When the Husband enters the room with flowers, she begins to gag. Despite the Young Woman’s pleas, the male Doctor forces the Young Woman to be given solid food and to see her baby. The Young Woman cries out, speaking of a dog named Vixen crying after birthing dead puppies, of a long stairway up to heaven with dead children going up and down, of the heavy book of Judgment, of God’s fat hands, of the Virgin Mary’s childbirth, and finally of herself. In a speakeasy, at one table, a man convinces a woman to have an abortion in order to keep her job; at another, a middle-aged homosexual man seduces a young boy with alcohol and convinces him to go up to his room; at a third table, two men wait for their dates. The first man, a traveling salesman named Harry, wants the other, Richard, to entertain one of the women while he goes to have sex with other – being able to get home to his wife by six o’clock. The Telephone Girl and the Young Woman arrive, and after Harry leaves to “do business” with the Telephone Girl, Richard speaks to the Young Woman (whose name is revealed to be Helen) of how he murdered two bandits in Mexico with a bottle of stones. Impressed with him, Helen follows him off to his apartment.
In a basement apartment, the sound of a hand organ outside plays the song “Cielito Lindo” (or “Little Heaven”) in the street. After sex, Helen and Richard talk of their future together – while Richard announces he will eventually return to Mexico. When the street light turns on through the window, Helen rushes to get dressed and go home. Eventually hoping to move to San Francisco with him someday, they kiss, and she takes a lily of his as a keepsake. Helen and the Husband sit reading newspapers – she reading one of domestic crises and he reading one of stocks and business. The phone rings and the Husband discovers one of his properties has been bought; after speaking of Helen as one of “his properties” and touching her, she flinches. Helen reads a story about “domestic murder” and the Husband complains of a cold chill. After Husband mentions an article about the Rio Grande revolution, Helen remembers Richard’s story and hears the sound of a man selling stones in the streets – she suddenly gets up from her chair. Helen sits in a courtroom on trial for the murder of her husband by way of an attack with a bottle of stones. While Helen denies her act on the stand, the Prosecution rev eals Helen’s delay in calling the police, her wearing of rubber gloves to bed, her washing of a blood-stained nightgown, her use of the stones from her almost-dead lily plant, and finally a confession of Richard’s affair with Helen. Helen finally confesses and reporters rush in to interrogate her. In a prison, a Priest prays for the soul of Helen, but she instead cites she feels more strength by the sound of a negro spiritual being sung by another inmate off in the distance. Barbers shave a patch of Helen’s hair, a plane flies above, and she wonders how her moment of freedom could be considered sinful. When her Mother comes to meet her, Helen first rejects then embraces her, asking her to take care of her daughter. The stage darkens as the sound of the Priest’s prayers mingle with that of reporters describing Helen’s final moments before the electric chair. The last we hear is the Young Woman crying out to “somebody” as the Priest prays for her absolution.
Significant PLAY Quotes “How are you feeling today? Better? No pain? You’re getting along fine. Such a sweet baby you have, too. Aren’t you glad it’s a girl? [YOUNG WOMAN makes a sign with her head “No.” ] You’re not! Oh, my! That’s no way to talk! Men want boys – women ought to want girls. Maybe you didn’t want either, eh? You’ll feel different when it begins to nurse. You’ll just love it then.” – Nurse
“I’ll tell you what you can count on! You can count that you’ve got to eat and sleep and get up and put clothes on your back and take ’em off again – that you got to get old – and that you got to die. That’s what you can count on! All the rest is in your head!” – Mother “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 a ll right – is it? When he puts a hand on me, my blood turns cold. But your blood oughtn’t run cold, ought it?” – Young Woman “He has wings – but he isn’t free! I’ve been free, Father! For one moment – down here on earth – I have been free! When I did what I did I was free! Free and not afraid! How is that, Father? How can that be? A great sin – a mortal sin – for which I must die and go to hell – but it made me free! One moment I was free! How is that, Father? Tell me that?” – Young Woman
Production History Plymouth Theatre, New York (September 7, 1928 – 91 performances) – Berkeley Playhouse, Berkeley (October 25, 1929) – Arts Theatre Club/Garrick Theatre (retitled, The Life Machine ; July 15, 1931) – Kamerny Theatre (May 1933)
Off-Broadway – Gate Theatre, New York (April 7, 1960) Off-Broadway – Public Theatre & New York Shakespeare Festival (October 2, 1990) West End – Lyttleton Theatre/Royal National Theatre (October 15, 1993)
Timeline – Henry Ford’s Model T assembly line developed/began production – World War I – Constitutional amendment permitting women’s suffrage – The Hairy Ape (an expressionist play by Eugene O’Neill) – The Adding Machine (the expressionist play by Elmer Rice) premieres – American Laboratory Theatre founded (Richard Boleslavsky & Maria Ouspenskaya) – First television transmission – Snyder-Gray murder trial – Machinal Broadway premiere
Quotes about Machinal “THE PLAN is to tell this story showing the different phases of life that the woman comes in contact with, and none of which she finds any place, any peace. The woman is essentially soft, tender, and the life around her is essentially hard, mechanized. Business, home, marriage, having a child, seeking pleasure – all are difficult to her – mechanical, nerve nagging. Only in an illicit love does she find anything with life in it for her, and when she loses this, the desperate effort to win free to it again is her undoing.”
“Superb and unbearable and harrowing in a way that leaves you bereft of any immediate comparison, and leaves you, too, for that matter, a limp and tear-stained wreck...” – John Anderson, New York Evening Journal (Sep. 8, 1928) “She has created a complete picture of life’s bitterness and essential meanness, painted with the small, oft-repeated strokes of the realist, yet achieving in perspective the sweep and swing of expressionism…it was not written for the masses, but about them.” – Pierre de Rohan New York American (Sep. 8, 1928)
“A masterful achievement…excessive relentlessness. It really is on the wrong side of good taste which is the way a lot of life actually is. Treadwell could have put in a nice witty scene here and there. But she just doesn’t bother.” – John O’Mahoney (Nov. 6, 1993) “Such honor is granted on the basis of it being one of the first examples of expressionism on American stages and the fact that it was as being based on a real life murder case…Treadwell threw herself into writing a play that would deal with the unfair treatment of woman by patriarchy.” Miriam Lopez Rodriguez “New Critical Approaches to Machinal ” (2011)
Glossary of Terms – An operator of adding machines, mechanical calculators used for financial bookkeeping (commercialized in the year 1892) – a type of sherry, named after the Montilla region of Spain – the early 20th century non-realism, avant-garde movement in art, music, literature, and drama that depicts a subjective (often fragmented or distorted) view of reality through the perception of the protagonist – hallmarks of this style often include a devaluation of the individual, equally expansive or clipped speech, and surrealistic or symbolic elements - taken from the French; meaning mechanical, automatic, or involuntary, in relation to machines – the two-decade long uprising against the governmental autocracy of Mexican dictator, Porfirio Diaz, leading to the eventual creation of the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (“National Revolutionary Party”) in 1929
Suggestions for Further Reading
Broadway’s Bravest Women: Selected Writings of Sophie Treadwell – ed. Jerry Dickey & Miriam-Lopez Rodriguez
Sophie Treadwell: A Research and Production Sourcebook – Jerry Dickey (1997) Violence in American Drama: Essays on Its Staging, Meanings and Effects – ed. Alfonso Ceballos Munoz, Ramon Espejo Romero, & Bernardo Munoz Martinez
Machinal: A Guide for Study – Elizabeth Coen (http://www.montclair.edu/arts/artsevents/oeco/images/ Machinal.pdf)
Production Photos
(Set of University of Toledo’s 2009 production)
(Los Angeles Open Fist Theatre Company – 2011)
(Central School of Speech and Drama – 2007) (Las Vegas Insurgo Theatre Movement ’s 2011 production)
