MACHINAL Presenation

TREADWELL
Treadwell worked sporadically as a reporter for various news publications. In fact,

it was through her journalistic connections that Treadwell gained admittance to
the murder trial that would serve as the inspiration for Machinal. Although
Treadwell was a rather prolific playwright, only two of her plays made it to
publication: Machinal and Hope for a Harvest.
While Sophie Treadwell did manage to gain admittance to the trial, she did not
attend to officially report upon it. Treadwell had previously officially reported on
two other high profile murder trials that featured female defendants. The result
of Treadwell’s courtroom observations would be Machinal. Jerry Dickey writes: 9
Rather than reporting on the events of the press, however, Treadwell used Snyder
as point of departure for a dramatic indictment of a society whose masculine laws
and orientations stifled the emotional needs of women. (11) She took this very
real point of inspiration and transplanted it into a framework of theatrical
expressionism thus allowing for some artistic distance between the non-fictional
and the theatrical. At her trial Ruth Snyder stated that the motive behind her and
her lover’s murderous act was to take “a step toward a larger freedom, a fuller
enjoyment of life…”
She is a modern, everyday woman” in a mechanized materialistic world: works in
an office, marries for financial stability, motherhood oppresses her, her lover
abandons her. The play is considered expressionist because of the flat characters,
the incorporated, harsh sound effects, the numerous short dialogues, and the
confusion of inner and outer reality. As Judith Barlow writes the expressionist
writing functions as the perfect medium for representing the life of a young
woman who asks an impersonal society “Is nothing mine?’’
Her story
Ruth Brown Snyder was a housewife from Queens, who began an affair in 1925 with Henry Judd
Gray, a married corset salesman. She began to plan the murder of her husband Albert, enlisting
Gray's help, but he appeared to be reluctant. Some claim that Ruth's distaste for her husband
apparently began when he insisted on hanging a picture of his late fiancée Jessie Guischard on the
wall of their first home and named his boat after her. Guischard, whom Albert described to Ruth as
"the finest woman I have ever met", had been dead for 10 years.[1] However, others have noted that
Albert Snyder was emotionally and physically abusive, blaming Ruth for the birth of a daughter
rather than a son, demanding a perfectly-maintained house, and physically assaulting both her and
their daughter, Lorraine, when his demands were not met. [2]
Ruth first persuaded Albert to purchase insurance, and with the assistance of an insurance agent
(who subsequently was fired and sent to prison for forgery), "signed" a $48,000 life insurance policy
that paid extra if an unexpected act of violence killed the victim. According to Gray, Ruth had made
at least seven attempts to kill Albert, all of which he survived. [3][4] On March 20, 1927, the
couple garrotted Albert and stuffed his nose full of chloroform-soaked rags, then staged his death as
part of a burglary.[4] Detectives at the scene noted that the burglar left little evidence of breaking into
the house. Moreover, Ruth's behavior was inconsistent with her story of a terrorized wife's
witnessing her husband being killed. [3]
Execution[edit]
Ruth was imprisoned at Sing Sing in Ossining, New York. On January 12, 1928, she became the
first woman to be executed at Sing Sing since Martha Place in 1899. She went to the electric
chair 10 minutes before Judd Gray, her former lover.[3][4] Her execution (by New York State
Electrician Robert G. Elliott) was caught on film at the moment electricity was running through her
body with the aid of a miniature plate camera strapped to the ankle of Tom Howard, a Chicago
Tribune photographer working in cooperation with the Tribune-owned Daily News.[7] Howard's
camera later was owned by inventor Miller Reese Hutchison[8] and later became part of the
collections of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.[7]
Ruth was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. Her footstone reads "May R." and
includes her date of death.[9]
While incarcerated on death row, Ruth Snyder wrote a sealed letter which she requested be given to
Lorraine "when she is old enough to understand". [17]
Treadwell’s writing is impressive for how much it leaves out. She doesn’t need to
show us every detail of Helen’s honeymoon or home life to make us understand
her sense of suffocation. You only have to listen to the staccato exchanges
between Helen and George about a property deal (“Did they come through?” –
“Sure they came through”) to realise that Treadwell prefigured Pinter and
Mamet.
While her dialogue is stylised, Treadwell uses the polyphonic possibilities of
theatre to press home her point. From the outset, Helen seems surrounded by
“the purgatory of noise”, whether it be the clack of office machinery, the clatter of
garbage collectors or the drill that shreds her postnatal nerves.
Critics appear to be in agreement that Machinal fits into the

expressionist theatrical tradition. It does, for one, fit into the
correct time period. It also exhibits many of the structural
techniques used by other practitioners of the style. Machinal
abandons the style of the well-made play and is written
episodically rather than in traditional Act/Scene structure. In
her script, Treadwell categorizes each of the nine scenes as
“episodes” and gives each a subtitle (e.g. “Episode One: To
Business,” “Episode Six: Intimate”). The way in which Treadwell
identifies her characters (by title rather than formal name) is
also an expressionistic technique. Styan writes, “Characters lost
their individuality and were merely identified by nameless
designations, like “The Man”, “The Father”, etc” (3). Treadwell’s
script introduces us to such characters as Young Woman,
Husband, Mother, Man, Telephone Girl, and a host of others
whose character identities are routed in these generic titles.
This aspect of Treadwell’s script is of particular significance
because the characters’ actual names are eventually made
known to the audience even though their official character
names remain titles. We learn, for example, in “Episode Five:
Prohibited” that Young Woman is named Helen. The character
of Husband is actually George H. Jones and we are 12 aware of
this fact from the very first episode, yet his character name
remains an alienating title throughout. Bert Cardullo and
Robert Knopf state that the “chief element of expressionist
drama to the stage” is “the use of the central character’s
completely subjective point of view to develop the action and
distort the other characters” (207).. She writes: Of these
characters, THE YOUNG WOMAN, going any day to business.
Ordinary. The confusion of her own inner thoughts, emotions,
desires, dreams cut off from any actual adjustment to the
routine work. She gets through this routine with a very small
surface of her consciousness. She is not homely and she is not
pretty. She is preoccupied with herself—with her person. She
has well kept hands, and a trick of constantly arranging her hair
over her ears. (366) 13 In keeping with her “subjective point of
view,” Young Woman is the only character to undergo any sort
of emotional transformation within the course the play.
Young Woman is the most developed character within
Machinal. All the other characters remain stereotypes. In her
original production notes for the play, Treadwell wrote that
these characters “are to be played as ‘personifications’ of
what they represent (genuinely, type actors giving type
performances)” (Wynn 115). Treadwell provides us with
descriptions of these “types” in her stage directions. She
describes Telephone Girl as “young, cheap and amorous”
(366). And “young, cheap and amorous” Telephone Girl
remains when we rejoin her in “Episode Five.” Stenographer is
“drying, dried” (366). The character of 1st Man, who becomes
simply Man once he becomes Young Woman’s lover,is
described as “pleasing, common, vigorous” and his friend, 2nd
Man, “is an ordinary salesman type” (Treadwell 380). These
succinct descriptions stand in contrast to the paragraph long
description of Machinal’s protagonist that Treadwell provides
at the beginning of the play
Does this play provide Helen and Ruth with agency?
‘’JUDGE: Why did you do it?
YOUNG WOMAN: Because I wanted to be free.

JUDGE: If you wanted to be free…why didn’t you divorce him?
YOUNG WOMAN: I couldn’t hurt him like that”
Todd Haimes the artistic director of this production has stated that in this world there are no villains.
Has Treadwell created a world where everybody does their best?
Treadwell’s critique includes technology, medicine, law, motherhood, the press the tabloid mythology
and demonization, romance and religion.
We should also keep in mind the fact that it does not describe a penalty that today is obsolete.Capital
punishment, also called the death penalty, is a legal penalty in the United States, with it being
a legal punishment in 27 states, American Samoa, the federal government, and the military.
Would you choose to focus on one of those matters as a directorial point of view or in an adaptation?

MACHINAL Presenation

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TREADWELL

Treadwell worked sporadically as a reporter for various news publications. In fact,

Critics appear to be in agreement that Machinal fits into the

Does this play provide Helen and Ruth with agency?

‘’JUDGE: Why did you do it?

YOUNG WOMAN: Because I wanted to be free.

YOUNG WOMAN: I couldn’t hurt him like that”

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