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Slaughter City

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Mixing reality and dream, the radical and the mystic, Slaughter City is a searing drama about life in the meat-packing industry. Kentucky poet Naomi Wallace has written a passionate protest against labor exploitation. She also takes on issues of race, gender, and the interaction of past and present. Slaughter City is full of poetry, humor, unusual characters and surprising turns of plot.

Ron Daniels directed the world premiere of Slaughter City for the Royal Shakespeare Company, opening with a British cast on January 17, 1996 at The Pit in London.

Credits

Creative team

By

Naomi Wallace

Naomi Wallace, the author of Slaughter City, was born in Prospect, Kentucky. Her work has been produced both in the U.S. and Great Britain. Her first play, The War Boys, was produced by the Finborough Theatre and was nominated for Best First Play by the London Finge Awards. In the Heart of America, a Gulf War Drama was first produced in London by the Bush Theatre. It was then produced by the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven and was recently published in the March issue of American Theatre and awarded the 1995 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her recent play One Flea Spare takes place in London during the Great Plauge of 1665. It was commissioned by the Bush and performed there in October and November 1995 which included an extended run following its success. One Flea Spare had its U.S. premiere at the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Louisville Actors Theatre in Kentucky. Naomi Wallace's poetry has been published on both sides of the Atlantic. Her first book of poems, To Dance a Stony Field, was published in Britain last May. Slaughter City will be published by Faber and Faber later this year.

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Directed by

Ron Daniels

Directed by

Ron Daniels

At the American Repertory Theater Ron Daniels has directed Hamlet, The Seagull, Dream of the Red Spider, Cakewalk, Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, The Cherry Orchard, Henry V, The Threepenny Opera, The Tempest, and Long Day's Journey Into Night on the Loeb Stage and Silence, Cunning, Exile and Slaughter City for the A.R.T. New Stages; he was also associate artistic director of the A.R.T. and director of the American Repertory Theater/Moscow Art Theater Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University from 1992 to 1996. Mr. Daniels was a founding member of the Teatro Oficina in São Paulo, Brazil, where he was born. In 1977, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company as artistic director of the Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon. His work in the U.S. includes Romeo and Juliet at the Guthrie Theater, Camille at Long Wharf, and Bingo, Ivanov, Man Is Man, and Mister Puntila and His Chauffeur Matti at the Yale Repertory Theatre. At the RSC, his productions included The Tempest, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Pericles, Timon of Athens, Richard II, A Clockwork Orange, and many more, as well as world premieres of works by David Edgar, David Rudkin, Stephen Poliakoff, Pam Gems, and others. Mr. Daniels has staged Titus Andronicus and Hamlet in Tokyo, Japan. He is an honorary associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

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Set and costume design by

Ashley Martin-Davis

Set and costume design by

Ashley Martin-Davis

Ashley Martin-Davis designed the sets and costumes for the American Repertory Theater production of Slaughter City and its prior London production. Other credits include All My Sons and The Good Woman of Setzuan at Theatre Royal, The Children's Hour, The Miser, and The Accidental Death of an Anarchist at the Royal National Theatre; and Measure for Measure, Murder in the Cathedral, and Dr. Faustus at the Royal Shakespeare Company, among many others. He has also designed extensively for Opera in England.

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Lighting design by

John Ambrosone

Lighting design by

John Ambrosone

Lighting Designer John Ambrosone has designed over thirty productions for the American Repertory Theater, including Lysistrata, Absolution, Marat/Sade, Othello, Animals and Plants, Mother Courage (2001 Elliot Norton Design Award), The Doctor's Dilemma, Three Farces and a Funeral, Nocturne, IvanovThe Cripple of Inishmaan, The King Stag, Boston Marriage, Charlie in the House of Rue, Valparaiso, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, How I Learned to Drive, Nobody Dies on Friday, Man and Superman, The Old Neighborhood, When the World Was Green (A Chef's Fable), Alice in Bed, Slaughter City, and Buried Child. On Broadway he designed The Old Neighborhood. Work in resident theaters includes the Alley Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, the Coconut Grove Playhouse, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Walnut Street Theatre, Trinity Repertory Company, and Arena Stage. Mr. Ambrosone also has designed in Singapore, Moscow, Japan, Brazil, Taiwan, Mexico, Germany, and France.

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Sound design by

Christopher Walker

Sound design by

Christopher Walker

Christopher Walker has composed music and designed sound for We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay!, Phaedra, Beckett Trio: Eh Joe, Ghost Trio, and Nacht und Traüme, and An Evening of Beckett, and designed sound for The King Stag, Loot, The Idiots Karamazov, Ivanov, The Cripple of Inishmaan, Charlie in the House of Rue, The Merchant of Venice, Valparaiso, The Taming of the Shrew, The Bacchae, The Wild Duck, Woyzeck, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Wild Duck, Alice in Bed, Slaughter City, Buried Child, Ubu Rock, The Threepenny Opera, The Accident, Demons, Waiting for Godot, The Oresteia, Hot 'n' Throbbing, The America Play, A Touch of the Poet, The Cherry Orchard, What the Butler Saw, and Those the River Keeps at the A.R.T. Previously he composed music and designed sound for productions at the Intiman Theatre, the Bathhouse Theatre, and the Alice B. Theatre. He also scores for dance and has composed for the Allegro Dance Festival, the Bumbershoot Festival, and On The Boards.

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Music composed by

Glyn Perrin

Roach, an African American worker in her mid-thirties Starla Benford
Maggot, a white worker in her mid-thirties Judith Hawking
Brandon, a white worker in his early twenties Jay Boyer
Cod, a white worker of Irish descent, mid-thirties S.J. Scruggs
Tuck, an African American, mid-forties Terry Alexander
Textile worker, a woman in her twenties Phoebe Jonas
Sausage Link Man, a white man, somewhat elderly Alvin Epstein
Mr. Baquin, a white company manager in his fifties Remo Airaldi