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Sophie Treadwell (1885–1970)

Autor(a) de Machinal

2+ Works 149 Membros 9 Reviews

Obras de Sophie Treadwell

Machinal (1928) 147 cópias

Associated Works

Plays by American Women: 1900-1930 (1981) — Contribuinte — 78 cópias
Gender in Modernism: New Geographies, Complex Intersections (2007) — Contribuinte — 12 cópias

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Data de nascimento
1885-10-03
Data de falecimento
1970-02-20
Sexo
female
Nacionalidade
USA
Local de nascimento
Stockton, California, USA
Local de falecimento
Tucson, Arizona, USA
Locais de residência
San Francisco, California, USA
Educação
University of California, Berkeley
Ocupação
playwright
journalist
actor
women's rights advocate
social activist
novelist
Pequena biografia
Sophie Treadwell was born to a pioneer family in Stockton, California. She was the only daughter of Alfred B. Treadwell, a judge, from whom she inherited a passion for all things Mexican and Spanish, and his wife Nellie Fairchild Treadwell. After her father deserted the family, Sophie and her mother moved to San Francisco, where she first learned about the theater. She attended the University of California at Berkeley, where she had to work several jobs to support herself; during this time, she also began to write one-act plays and short stories. After graduating with a degree in French in 1906, she worked for a year as a teacher in a one-room school in Yankee Jims, once a mining camp during the California Gold Rush/ She then moved to Los Angeles where she studied acting and worked for a brief time as a vaudeville singer. She returned to San Francisco to work as a reporter on the San Francisco Bulletin. She soon became a feature writer with her own byline.

In 1910. she married William O. McGeehan, a popular sports writer for the San Francisco Chronicle and later moved with him to New York City, where he got a job with the New York Herald Tribune. Sophie persuaded the newspaper to send her to Europe as a war correspondent during World War I.

In NYC, Sophie joined the Lucy Stone League of suffragists and was an associate editor for Equal Rights, a weekly publication for the National Woman’s Party. She befriended many modernist personalities and modern artists of the time, including Louise and Walter Arensberg and painter Marcel Duchamp. Sophia advocated for sexual independence, birth control rights, and increased sexual freedom for women. She traveled often with her husband across the USA, Europe, and Northern Africa, all the while continuing to write plays; by the end of her career, she had written 39. In 1921, she used her Mexican connections to secure the only American interview with Pancho Villa at his ranch near Durango, Mexico. This visit resulted in her first professionally produced play on Broadway, Gringo (1922). Her most successful play was the expressionist work Machinal (1928). It was staged in England and in many European cities, including two productions in Moscow.
It was adapted by BBC-TV and by several American television programs in the 1950s. When Machinal was revived at the off-Broadway Gate Theater in 1960, it won the Vernon Rice Award.

Throughout most of the 1950s, Sophie lived abroad, in Austria and in Spain, where she published a novel in 1959. At age 80, she was actively engaged in the production of her final work, Now He Doesn't Want to Play, at the University of Arizona.

Membros

Resenhas

How unlucky was this? Having arranged to see this months ago at the Almeida, we got to hang out afterwards with S-L and her erudite visiting American friend Daniel. Daniel's a playwright and so on and so forth. You say something like 'I wanted to bang some sense into her' he says something very complicated and technical and theatrery. It was a great opportunity. If only I hadn't soundly slept through at least half the play, I could have taken advantage of it.

I am curious to know if I would have liked this better if I'd seen the whole thing....

… (mais)
 
Marcado
bringbackbooks | outras 8 resenhas | Jun 16, 2020 |
How unlucky was this? Having arranged to see this months ago at the Almeida, we got to hang out afterwards with S-L and her erudite visiting American friend Daniel. Daniel's a playwright and so on and so forth. You say something like 'I wanted to bang some sense into her' he says something very complicated and technical and theatrery. It was a great opportunity. If only I hadn't soundly slept through at least half the play, I could have taken advantage of it.

I am curious to know if I would have liked this better if I'd seen the whole thing....

… (mais)
 
Marcado
bringbackbooks | outras 8 resenhas | Jun 16, 2020 |
How unlucky was this? Having arranged to see this months ago at the Almeida, we got to hang out afterwards with S-L and her erudite visiting American friend Daniel. Daniel's a playwright and so on and so forth. You say something like 'I wanted to bang some sense into her' he says something very complicated and technical and theatrery. It was a great opportunity. If only I hadn't soundly slept through at least half the play, I could have taken advantage of it.

I am curious to know if I would have liked this better if I'd seen the whole thing....

… (mais)
 
Marcado
bringbackbooks | outras 8 resenhas | Jun 16, 2020 |
My first encounter with this play was when my college put on a production and I had to write a paper about it for one of my classes. I knew the bare minimum about the subject matter and left the school theater that night in awe. It led me to want to spend some time with the play in the written sense and learn more about its author Sophie Treadwell.

Sophie Treadwell is thought to be one of the first female war reporters and was one of the first women to write and director on Broadway. Treadwell brought Freud's psychoanalysis to the stage by bringing the story of Ruth Snyder, the first woman to die in the electric chair, and her lover for the murder of Snyder's husband.

What I loved most about this play is Treadwell's use of language. The way she set up her characters dialogues, with lots of pauses, makes the emotions and characters seem that much more realistic. It's easy to tell that the main character, mostly known as Young Woman, has some sort of mental illness. Her lack of feeling she belongs is always an issue for her until she actually falls in love, and not with her husband. It is very interesting how Treadwell decided to make Young Woman dislike being touched, dislike small places and seems to have an issue with germs. It allows the audience to feel as if they are in Young Woman's mind instead of just watching events unfold.

Reading the words after seeing the play live helped sink in the issues that Treadwell was trying to hit home. Her work raises issues about class, race, sex and women's rights. Although Treadwell's play is a more minimalist approach to the famous case. It is a play that is still shockingly relevant today as it was then, no pun intended.
… (mais)
 
Marcado
IntrovertedBooks | outras 8 resenhas | Mar 26, 2018 |

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Associated Authors

Estatísticas

Obras
2
Also by
3
Membros
149
Popularidade
#139,413
Avaliação
½ 3.7
Resenhas
9
ISBNs
5

Tabelas & Gráficos