Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 12 Number 1, April 2011
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MACHINAL
by Sophie Treadwell at UW, 2011
sitting in the balcony
I am struck unnaturally
by the youth of this class
(or is it my age?)
many of whom I have taught or
am teaching in other
more bookish courses
they are keen this evening
to engage each other
a very good sign indeed
too often young actors
act in bubbles not paying
true attention to each other
or take “thoughtful” pauses
when pace would make the audience think
but in this play about the machinery
of life, technologies and ritual
they respond to what they receive
more often than not they recover
quickly from mistakes
and still they show what
being caught in machinery
can look like
(in fact, skillfully recovering from a mistake
exposes the machinery of a show)
the more engaged they become, in fact
the clearer character caughtness is caught
ten women, one man in this class
some of the women nail a male
character with (e)razor wit
under Shelagh’s direction Sophie’s play speaks
maybe louder than it did over eighty years ago