ABSTRACT
For two decades, from 1922 to 1941, Treadwell successfully obtained productions of seven of her plays on Broadway. During this period, she wrote five other full-length plays that remained unproduced, as well as two others – The Love Lady (1925) and The Island (copyrighted 1930) – that she self-produced in private performances at New York’s Heckscher Theatre and the Edmond Town Hall in Newtown, Connecticut, respectively. During these decades, Treadwell also continued her development as an actor and director, tried twice to work in Hollywood doing film adaptations and script revisions, and advanced her reputation as a professional journalist with several series of articles on Mexican culture and politics.1 She composed another seven full-length dramas – some re-workings of earlier plays, and at least one intended primarily for television – from 1942 to the mid-1950s. Thus, as with the preceding chapter, space does not allow for a discussion of each of these dramatic works. Instead, the focus here will be on Treadwell’s plays presented for Broadway audiences, as these were the works that largely shaped her critical and public reputation in her own time. This chapter will also briefly discuss two of Treadwell’s later works that received stage and television productions, while her most noteworthy stage success, Machinal, will be discussed exclusively in Chapter 9.
