ABSTRACT

Sophie Treadwell’s playwriting apprenticeship was a lengthy one. She began writing plays while still in college and continued to do so for the next sixteen years before gaining her first Broadway production. During this time, even while working as a full-time journalist, she completed an average of over a play a year, including nine full-length works. Although she often received encouragement from mentors like Helena Modjeska or agents or producers, Treadwell saw only two of her plays produced during this period. The first was a short sketch titled Sympathy (An Unwritten Chapter), which grew out of a popular serial for the San Francisco Bulletin and was produced during a one-week run in 1915 as part of a vaudeville bill in that city’s Pantages Theatre. The other was a single performance of her play Claws (later retitled The Love Lady) in which she acted and produced herself on New Year’s Eve 1918 at the Lenox Little Theatre in New York.