The University of Akron School of Dance, Theatre, and Arts Administration presents Machinal, by Sophie Treadwell, directed by Terence Cranendonk- a dark, Expressionist drama based on the 1927 case of Ruth Snyder, a woman convicted of killing her husband and executed in the electric chair at New York's famous Sing Sing prison. Machinal (an archaic word meaning "mechanical") not only depicts a Young Woman's struggle to fight back against an oppressive, suffocating social machine that forces her into a meaningless job and a loveless marriage. It reflects a mechanical world that traps and crushes everyone in it--men and women, rich and poor, old and young. We are all complicit, the play seems to say, in creating our mechanical lives.
Theater/Performance
Dance
Performance