This past weekend, the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies’s Sock & Buskin group staged its last performance of the play “Machinal.” The show ran from Oct. 30 to Nov. 9 in the Stuart Theatre.
An expressionist drama, “Machinal” was written by Sophie Treadwell, a journalist who was inspired to write the play after the murder trial of Ruth Snyder in the 1920s.
“Machinal” explores the story of a young woman through nine episodes of her life, including work, marriage and motherhood. According to Kym Moore, co-director of the show and professor of theatre arts and performance studies, “This one woman’s story, as Sophie Treadwell wrote it, is meant to be every woman.”
The process of preparing for the show began last semester when Moore taught the play for a TAPS class with Assistant Teaching Professor of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies Renee Fitzgerald. Moore said that both she and Fitzgerald were inspired by the students in their class to pursue the play as a full production. “As our students were working on it, (Fitzgerald) and I got very excited about the script,” she added.
After the show was pitched to the TAPS department’s performance board, Sock & Buskin, preparation for the fall production began. Moore recalled how she and her team did extensive research to produce the show, including watching different productions of “Machinal.”
Courtesy of Erin X. Smithers
“It’s one thing to read a play, and it’s something entirely different to work on it,” she said.
Moore also reflected on the process of co-directing the show with Adjunct Lecturer of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies Richard Waterhouse, saying “it was a match made in heaven.”
While there was some delegation of scenes between directors, Moore and Waterhouse collaborated and coordinated with each other throughout the rehearsal process. Moore said her skills in visuals and design were complimented by Waterhouse’s specialization in performance.
In an email to The Herald, Waterhouse added that the preparation process is like “a long, slow, uphill climb, and then suddenly you’re on top of the mountain and you know that all of the work was worth it!”
Moore and Waterhouse also worked extensively with Fitzgerald, who worked as the scenic designer, to develop the production. Fitzgerald wrote in an email to The Herald that her role required her “to create a set that could embody the character of the societal environment we saw in the script: one that feels inhumane, mechanical, formidable, overstimulating and can induce a sense of claustrophobia.”
Fitzgerald also managed the spatial needs and constraints of the production, ensuring scenery, props and cast members moved smoothly between the nine scenes, she wrote.
“As the set designer, I have to understand and account for all of these competing interests, and must find solutions that satisfy the production’s aesthetic desires and practical requirements,” she wrote.
Calvin Ware ’26, the stage manager of “Machinal,” was one of the students that took Moore and Fitzgerald’s class last spring. When he learned that “Machinal” was this semester’s Sock & Buskin production, Ware “was excited by the possibility of actually getting to work on it outside of the theoretical classroom environment,” he wrote in an email to The Herald.
As stage manager, Ware was tasked with “coordinating just about everything except for the actual acting and creative performance that happens on stage,” he wrote. This included creating schedules for rehearsals and connecting the directors and cast with the various designers that worked on the technical aspects of the production.
Courtesy of Erin X. Smithers
Although only a few students served as production staff alongside Ware, the entire cast was composed of undergraduate students at Brown.
Isabel Levine ’28 played the show’s unnamed protagonist, referred to as “Young Woman.” She recalled that when she was first introduced to her character, “it was kind of overwhelming, because it was such a blank slate.” But she said this allowed her to build her own interpretation and find the parts of herself that resonated with the character.
Levine added that working with Moore and Waterhouse was an important part of her preparation, calling the rehearsal process a “true collaboration between director and actor.”
When Gideon Buddenhagen ’26 was cast for the role of “Man,” the world of theater was still new to him. “This is actually my first time doing a theater production, if you don't count my 8th grade musical where I was the executioner in ‘Alice in Wonderland,’” he said.
Buddenhagen, who has acted in student films, said, “There is a lot more vulnerability in auditioning for theater than there is for film … (where) you come in, you read the sides and then you go.”
He added that the experience of working with Sock & Buskin was helpful for pre-professional actors. “I feel really lucky that this is my entry point to theater acting,” he said.
