Aieyla Santaella: Machinal through Time, An Interview with Donnie Tuse

Machinal by Sophie Treadwell was written in the year 1928, it was inspired by the real case of convicted and executed murderer Ruth Synder. The play was first produced and directed by Arthur Hopkins in 1928 and was considered to be a high point in expressionist theater. Machinal will come back to life once more here at Hunter College!  And we will be able to see how Machinal has traveled from the year 1928 to 2018! Here is an interview with Donnie Tuse, who plays the role of Helen Jones in Machinal here at hunter, discussing how they made Machinal their own as well as staying true to its original roots.

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

What’s different about the Machinal from the year 1928 and the Machinal you are performing?

“ Naturally time just gives away to social changes, the original transcript of the play was just very white oriented and the fact that I’m even Helen is a gigantic change. The specific script from before- hand when it was written made it very clear that Helen is a white women, and that all the characters are white people except a character at the end that was called a negro, singing a negro spiritual, which is very 1920’s and was very racially insensitive. So that in it self’s shows a huge difference in what we are doing with the play.”

How did you all adjust the play to suit the audience? Or did you not and why?

 Yes, somethings were adjusted, small things like the word shall were taken out because no one really uses words like that, we replaced them with words like will. the removal of the negro and the negro spiritual happened because it is a little dated for this time. There was a line taken out of the original text where someone mentions all women look like angels, all white women anyway, we try to make as less offensive as possible”

Being that Machinal is an expressionist play, how many of those attributes did you carry into the modernized version of the play?

“ I think that there are still lots of expressionist attributes in the play, and I think they are done very beautifully especially because there are three Helen’s. I think that Lee the director found a way to tie in this expressionist story. It was clear that all three of us are the same woman but at the same time different women because what happened to Helen, could happen to any woman.”

How does your character think now compared to how they would’ve thought in 1928?

“well if we are referring to the Helen Jones in the 1928 version, Helen was a white woman, so that automatically makes my interpretation on Helen different because I am not white. There’s also obviously more social freedom that a woman feels in today’s modern era versus 1928, if I had to compare them I would think 1928 Helen is probably more trapped than 2018 Helen.”

Has the message of the play changed over time with society? Why?

“This is under the assumption that the original message of the play is about how society trapped this woman, and forced her to fit the cookie cutter life style. You go to work, you have a job, you get married, you quit that job because now your husbands suppose to take care of you, you do everything that your husband says your suppose to do. Basically there was no life outside of your husband and child. I think that there’s still aspects of this hat are displayed in society today, granted its not going to be a rigged as 1928 but there’s still this form of I guess you can call it sexism. So in my opinion I believe that the message is re-vamped in a sense to suit the modern woman.”