Summary Of Sophie Treadwell's 'Machinal'

The book “Sophie Scholl and the White Rose” by Annette Dumbach is a book about resistance, Nazism and the path to freedom under Hitler’s rein. In this story the main characters Sophie and Hans Scholl play a part in the path towards resistance during Hitler’s power.

“37 Who Saw Murder but Didn’t Call Police” (Gansburg), that was the title of a New York Times article talking about the horrific death of Kitty Genovese, a 28 year old bar manager living in Queens, who was raped and stabbed during a two hour window, from around 2:30 a.m. to the time ambulances arrived at 4:15, by Winston Moseley (Worthen). An estimated 37 people either heard or saw the events of that fateful night in 1964, but to Kitty’s demise, none had taken any sort of action(Gansburg). The murder of Kitty Genovese has sparked many psychologists to research and later create the term “Bystander Effect”, or “The Genovese Effect” (Merry).This Bystander Effect is also very prevalent in the play The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller less than a decade before the murder of Kitty Genovese. This paper will discuss Arthur Miller’s possible views on the Bystander Effect by connecting Mary Warren from The Crucible with the Kitty Genovese incident.

Our performance was effective because of how clear and straight forward it was, even though it was mime. The audience where aware of the setting and it being around a dinner table due to the two chairs being opposite each other with a ‘table’ in the middle, the audience where aware of which characters were which as we characterised the roles very well. For example, Anna was very giggly and hyper, contrasting Catherine’s formal demeanour and John and Maureen were a typical married couple. We used physical theatre for the oven and the stairs, which was stylistic and different for the audience to see, this fit in with the overall style of the lay as most of the stage directions involve physical theatre as in ‘The Brussels Sprouts Scene’ “the whole of this scene is performed stylistically with people frantically changing roles, playing scenery, properties and characters”. The use of thought tracking helped the audience to figure out which character is which. The use of gestures was also used, Maureen slapped Anna’s hand instantly giving away her very paternal and motherly role as Maureen. Our scene was effective also because the crackers being pulled apart in itself is representing the family being pulled apart for many reasons not just the economy, but the toll Catherine’s anorexia takes on the whole Dunbar family in different ways. Looking at Bleu’s group I could definitely see how they marked the moment: the tempo

Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal was loosely based and inspired by the murder trial of Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray, her lover. Together they conspired

The first chapter, “The Art of Staging” claims “Staging in fiction involves putting characters in specific strategic positions in the scene so that some unvoiced nuance is revealed.” (Baxter 13) This includes the character’s standing positions, their proximity to each other, specific gestures and facial expressions, which give the reader more insight to the scene and the characters without explicitly saying so. This goes hand in hand with the setting of the atmosphere where atmosphere sets the dominant tone or the mood of a story. The atmosphere can be in reference to the setting or the characters themselves. Here, the reader is to read between the lines. The key to this is using a lot of detail which is crucial to providing the information.

One of the most important aspects that Sharon Sullivan highlights in her article about the play is how its surrealism allows for the focus to be on the women, and not the killings. “Clements decentres the act of murder by focusing on the experiences and actions of the women before and after death, emphasizing their individuality and the possibility of redemption.” (Sullivan, 68) The film, however, nullifies any attempt by the play to humanize these women, for it cuts out the witty dialogues between the women, portraying them only as they are represented in the media, as alcoholics, prostitutes, and victims. The movie places the murder and Rebecca, Aunt Shadie’s Daughter, at the center of the plot line and completely erases the side stories of the murdered aboriginal women. While the screenplay is also written by Marie Clements, it dehumanizes the women by stripping them of their identity and turning their stories back into a classic Hollywood horror

My research project is on Machinal by Sophie Treadwell. I will be focusing on the struggles that the Young Woman faces in the play, and how her behavior relates to mental illnesses. My approach is to create a scenario where half of the play seems like it is not real. I want to make the audience really think about what is real and what is being made up in the Young Woman’s mind.

Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal is a strangely riveting play so filled with unlikable characters that it makes one want to scream and throttle whichever character is closest at hand, without prejudice as to which persona it might be, as they are all equally detestable in their own way. Unfortunately, the infuriating characters are exactly what make the play so fascinating. Each of the characters in the play, originally intended to display that life is an inescapable machine, exhibit many disturbing psychological qualities, and the main character suffers a slew of near textbook psychological misfortune. Whether Sophie Treadwell created her play with this facet intentionally or not is unknown, but the examples are so perfect it is difficult to

The director wanted to convey the strong and relevant message of the play to the audience, therefore naturalism became essential. As a verbatim piece, the director aimed to avoid overacting and stay true to the characters original intention. Therefore, when adding characterisation, I was careful about being too extravagant with my blocking, body language and facial expressions. For example, Romaine Patterson delivers a powerful monologue, supporting LGBT rights 'I decided that someone needed to stand toe to toe with this guy and show the differences.' The director and I discussed only adding minor movement for Romaine, to avoid overacting. I worked with the director on the timing of my movement. In the last section of my monologue, I was required to wear angel wings and raise them when saying 'And we're calling it Angel Action.' Therefore, we rehearsed the timing, to achieve a natural and polished movement. The director required actors to transform into new characters onstage. The costumes were positioned on stage behind the actors, so transitions were efficient. This Brechtian technique required actors to apply small changes to their costumes to help represent new characters. These fast-paced transitions exhibited my ability to portray several

Susan Keating Glaspell was an American playwright, novelist, journalist and actress. She was born July 1, 1876, in Davenport, Iowa. To most readers Susan Glaspell is still known primarily as the author of Trifles, the frequently anthologized, classic feminist play about two women’s secret discovery of a wife’s murder of her husband, or the short-story “A Jury of Her Peers,” a re-writing of that piece. “Trifles” and “A Jury of Her Peers” are extremely similar to one another in almost every respect. Much of the dialogue is lifted directly from the play and placed into the short story. Additionally, all of the plot points are the same, with some insignificant differences. An analysis on Susan Glaspell’s play, “Trifles” and her short story, “A Jury of Her Peers” compares the differences of

Over the extensive history of the theatre arts, most of the many plays and productions fall into unique categories in regards to structure. The two most simplest of the structural categories are climactic and episodic. A climactic structure, or alternatively known as an intensive structure, contains a play in which all components are restricted as the main conflict in the story commences late into the play and only a little time passes until the story occurs. Everything is restricted to a few components. There are not as many characters, scenery change and very limited amounts of action. climactic structures focuses heavily on the climax in contrast to other structures. One notable example of a climactic performance is Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. The story of Oedipus is that of tragedy and despair as Oedipus and his family are unable to escape the fate that Oedipus has had since birth. The exposition and starting action (in this case, the events that led up to him to being king of Thebes) occur before the play and is only ever talked about. The play only takes place in the castle and has only four primary characters. Ultimately, Oedipus Rex only takes place within a day and primarily focuses on the realization and aftermath of the story of Oedipus and his sins, or the climax. All these components that define a climactic structure of production are found in the aforementioned play by Sophocles, strengthening what a climactic structure is and the vast potential a climactic play

What I liked about most about this article was the used of psychology to help the reader fully grasp the characterization in the play. With the use of Freud, Erickson, and Kohlberg’s work we are shown that throughout history women have never been fully understood; leading them to be categorized as “less” than a man. The article also goes over how different the developmental years for males and females are because of gender roles placed on them. This helps to understand the built up frustration the murderess and women in the story felt. The underestimation and the belittlement the women experience from the men, their own husbands, leads up to them keeping the evidence to themselves and leaving the murder case

Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia. She had a job as a social worker, teacher, lecturer and she also wrote: “Elethia” which was written on 1981 which means she wrote “Elethia” when she was about 37 year of age. The story Elethia is about the afterlife of Uncle Albert from her view. “Elethia” is a pleasant young girl who works at a restaurant which was owned by the man that had an ancestor who was slave owners of a big plantation in a town. At this restaurant slavery still existed in some ways even after the law was passed, which the commandment ended the slavery, but it still existed in lots of our communities. However, the scatter of slavery was still in the community because of the presence of slave owners who has experience slavery in different ways. The slavery was so essential for them that Uncle Albert was stuffed as a worker and has been made the attraction for the people in the community to view in the restaurant. Even though the restaurant was named after him, the racism and slavery have still been an unchanging fact for American word.

Margaret Atwood creates a haunting and beautiful piece describing the experience a sad child goes through. She structures her poem by using five stanzas; two stanzas consisting of five lines, then one stanza with ten lines, and ending with two stanzas consisting of five lines. She uses simple yet powerful diction, tone, metaphors, similes, symbolism, and imagery to show the unknown speaker giving advice to a sad child. Her message/theme is sadness is a part of life and there are different ways to deal with it, but when death comes the thing that one is being sad about doesn’t matter.

‘Machinal’ is a piece of expressionistic theatre (Reesman, 1997) that was written by American journalist Sophie Treadwell, in 1928. ‘Machinal’ is based on the life of convicted murderer Ruth Snyder who was executed in January 1928 for the murder of her husband, which is similar to what happens to the character of ‘Young Woman’ as the piece progresses. ‘Machinal’ follows a young woman who lives with her mother who marries her boss. The young woman has a baby with her husband, and then she has an affair with another man. The young woman then murders her husband and is executed after she is convicted of the murder. ‘Machinal’ was first performed on Broadway in 1928 at the Plymouth Theatre with the cast including Clark Gable. The production was a success and it ran for 91 performances. However, in 1931 the production ran in London and it received mixed reviews. The different opinions were formed due to the violent and sexual themes that featured within the piece. The greatest success came from Russia at Moscow’s Kamerny Theatre. Treadwell worked as a court reporter first for the San Francisco Bulletin and the New York Herald Tribune.