SOPHIE TREADWELL: THE CAREER OF A TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN FEMINIST PLAYWRIGHT.
Item
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Title
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SOPHIE TREADWELL: THE CAREER OF A TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN FEMINIST PLAYWRIGHT.
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Identifier
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AAI8222991
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identifier
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8222991
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Creator
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WYNN, NANCY EDITH.
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Date
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1982
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Theater
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Abstract
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Sophie Treadwell, journalist, playwright and feminist, was born in 1885 and died in 1970, having created an impressive writing career that spanned nearly seventy years. She grew up in Stockton, California, and attended the University of California at Berkeley, graduating in 1906 with a Bachelor of Letters in French.;She became a staff writer for the San Francisco Bulletin and, in 1910, married William O'Connell McGeehan, who later became a well-known sports writer. Treadwell, who retained her maiden name throughout her career, served as a war correspondent in 1915. Moving from San Francisco to New York City after World War I, she became an investigative reporter and sometime Sob Sister for the New York American and the Tribune.;She began writing one-act plays in college and completed her first full-length play in 1906-7. Her most productive playwriting period covered nearly two decades, with her first Broadway play being produced in 1922 and her last in 1941. Her Expressionistic masterpiece, Machinal, was produced in 1928 by Arthur Hopkins and received subsequent productions in Russia. She continued writing for television and the stage until 1968 when she retired.;During her long career, she distinguished herself as an investigative reporter, exploring problems faced by women, children, and minority groups in a society not often sympathetic to their needs. As a playwright, she created a substantial body of work dramatizing the concerns or special plights of women.;Treadwell made a place for herself as a woman creator in the American theatre during a time when women functioned in the theatre mostly as actresses. She created strong women characters for the American stage who attempted to explore problems as they found them in the larger male world, not as in what Treadwell viewed as the more limited sphere of female concerns. Treadwell's diaries, correspondence, and plays; the range of this remarkable playwright's interests and dramatic experiments, the size and quality of her achievement, form the basis of this study of her life and career.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Theatre
