A Double Bill of Murder and Alienation - MST – Rice Village

A Double Bill of Murder  and Alienation in the Face of New Technology:

Feb. 13 – Mar. 14, 2010
MST – Rice Village

Machinal
By Sophie Treadwell
Directed by Troy

and

A Number
By Caryl Churchill
Houston Premiere
Directed by Andrew Ruthven

Machinal is a tragedy of isolation turned to murder, loosely based on the sensational 1927 murder trial of
Ruth Snyder, who received the electric chair for killing her husband. Sophie Treadwell used the case as a
springboard for her own speculations about what circumstances might drive a seemingly harmless
stenographer to commit murder.

Caryl Churchill’s startling one-act A Number examines the emotional repercussions of human-cloning and explores the nature of the father-son relationship. Salter has three sons. His wife gave birth to the eldest. A lab created the second. The third he didn’t even know existed. Forced to explain and try to make sense of his decisions, Salter stares into the questioning, accusing faces of his own flesh and blood who confronts him with the fact that each is merely one of "a number." The play premiered in 2002 at the Royal Court Theatre in London with Michael Gambon and Daniel Craig.

Main Street Theater