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

 

P.K. Brask