DIRECTOR’S NOTES

Expressionism: A nonrealistic theatre movement that developed in the early twentieth century. Highly theatrical.
Mechanical. De-humanizing. Stark. Harsh. Disconnected. Robotlike. Staccato. Repetitious. Abstract. Nightmarish.

It is within this stylistic playground that Sophie Treadwell created Machinal in 1927. Treadwell, a journalist, followed several famous murder trials in the early 1910s and 1920s,
including the heavily publicized Ruth Snyder case. Snyder was convicted of conspiring with her lover to kill her husband and eventually became one of the first females executed in New
York. Treadwell loosely based Machinal on Snyder’s story and experimented with expressionism and other theatrical innovations to explore and critique patriarchal society, capitalism, marriage and domestication. In her stage directions, Treadwell wrote,
“The Plot is the story of a woman who
murders her husband - an ordinary young woman, any woman.
The Plan is to tell this story by showing the different phases of
life that the woman comes in contact with, and in none of which she finds any place, any peace.”

This play confronts the seductiveness of the well-oiled machines in our lives; those unchallenged systems that seem to be functioning so efficiently. They are predictable and their rhythmic noises can be hypnotically soothing. But Treadwell seems to be encouraging us to shake ourselves awake from those everyday mesmerizing hums - to remember our dreams, celebrate our individualities, and challenge those comforting
systems that appear to be working - almost - without a glitch.