Alexandra Whitehead

In Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal, a woman must navigate a world that thrives on conformity and increasingly shuns the needs of the individual. Helen’s fragility is contrasted against the rigid expectations of this world. In each episode she oscillates between passively allowing her life to occur around her and actively exercising her autonomy in the pursuit of freedom.

Beyond Treadwell’s intent to create a hard world in which Helen feels out of place, I have sought to represent the expected progression of the female experience, and the idea that Helen’s life is happening around her in an inevitable sequence. Using the concept of a revolving door, i devised a doughnut revolve quartered by four walls of glass bricks. Both revolving sections rotate independently to allow a gestural progression through the play. As the set revolves, glimpses of scenes to come are intentionally revealed which is intended to highlight the unavoidable advance of each stage in Helen’s life.

Due to the enduring relevance of themes of gender roles/expectations, especially the lack of female autonomy within a ‘man’s world’, I decided to abstract the time period. For costuming I used colour and materiality to signify power, freedom and conformity in varying degrees as we progress through the play. I drew heavily on styles from the original context of the late ‘20s to capture Helen’s softness and incongruence with her surroundings. In contrast, the other characters reflect the ‘80’s modern minimalism of the set design (including the quintessential ‘power suit’, synonymous with capitalism) combined with militaristic references to create a cold, unfeeling world at odds with the soft, feeling Helen.