Slaughter City

by Naomi Wallace

Set in a sausage-making factory in the U.S. "somewhere in the past, " "Slaughter City" looks at the pressure and horrific working conditions of factory floor workers. Kentucky playwright Naomi Wallace prings sharp insight, political anger, and cool, graceful and poetic language to bloody and tension-filled circumstances.

Genres: Plays

91 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Naomi Wallace is an American playwright, screenwriter and poet from Kentucky. She is widely known for her plays, and has received several distinguished awards for her work.

Her Finborough Theatre productions include And I And Silence, which subsequently transferred to Signature Theater, New York City. Other theatre productions include In the Heart of America (Bush Theatre), Slaughter City (Royal Shakespeare Company), One Flea Spare (Public Theater, New York City), The Trestle at Pope Lick Creekand Things of Dry Hours (New York Theatre Workshop), The Fever Chart: Three Visions of the Middle East (Public Theater, New York City), and Night is a Room (Signature Theater, New York City).

Naomi has been awarded the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize twice, the Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award, the Obie Award and the Horton Foote Award. She is also a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts development grant. In 2013, Naomi received the inaugural Windham Campbell Prize for Drama, and in 2015 an Arts and Letters Award in Literature. Her play One Flea Spare was recently incorporated into the permanent repertoire of the French National Theatre, La Comédie-Française. Only two American playwrights have been added to La Comédie’s repertoire in two hundred years, the other being Tennessee Williams.

Reviews

[Eva · Rating 5 out of 5]

This play is so viceral, poetic, dynamic and stunning. I don't know quite what to say. It scared me a thrilled me and I loved it.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think that you either need to read this play twice or get your hands on a good plot synopsis or maybe just keep re-reading the scenes with Cod because a lot of it went over my head the first time through.

[Jhoana Naranjo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Le pongo dos estrellas y media porque tiene tantos plot twist y cosas random que no hay manera de aburrirse JAJAJAJA

[Hungry Rye · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my first time reading a play and it was super interesting. I haven’t read any like anti-capitalist plays before and I think this did a really good job of analyzing class conflict by retelling the triangle shirt factory fire tragedy I really want to see this in person and I think it would be really good but I think reading plays it’s just not for me.

[amyleigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

My second time reading this and it was just as visceral as the first. Dripping in blood and guts but also unmoored in time and space, a dream and all too much of the body. About consent and crossing lines - gender, race, time, space. The reach of history, the looming of the future. About production and reproduction, staging weariness, revolt, mobilizing, and crisis.

[Alba · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh. My. God. This stressed me so much. I loved it. I am also extremely confused. I LOVE IT. Read this. 🔥🔥🔥

[Jihan_elp · Rating 2 out of 5]

Explotación laboral, deshumanización, sexualización y racismo. Un poco de todo, y mucho símbolismos también. Guiño guiño Sausage man

[Hagar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting....and quite puzzling...