Slaughter City
by Naomi Wallace
JACKALOPE THEATRE
May 13 - June 4, 2011
"An affecting production...Kaiser Ahmed's staging creates a nightmarish twilight world for Wallace's piece. The visual design is apt throughout, particularly the animal carcasses constructed out of rags (designed by Melanie Berner) that clearly establish the connection between the Triangle tragedy and the current travails of American blue-collar life, where workers suffer death by a thousand cuts."
-- Nina Metz, Chicago Tribune
"The production is handsomely staged by Ahmed... drawing a direct line between this future-dystopian slaughterhouse and the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, whose tragic place in labor history is invoked late in the play."
-- Time Out Chicago
Mixing reality and dream, the radical and the mystic, Slaughter City is a searing drama about life in the meat-packing industry. While the odd and sinister Mr. Baquin lords over the plant from his pristine office high above, the workers on the kill-floor find it impossible to muscle out of the muck that earns them their meager paycheck. Inequalities between men and women, black and white, are coming to a head when two mysterious strangers arrive – one urging management to push the workers harder, the other joining with the union and inciting them to strike. The workers struggle with whether to obey the oppressive company that signs their checks, or their own animal instincts for freedom and for each other.
Featuring: Kristin Anderson, Warren Feagins, Ryan Heindl, Jack McCabe, John Milewski, Anne Sears, Katherine Swan, and AJ Ware
Design Team: Bill Anderson (Scenic), Emma Weber (Costume), Melanie Berner (Prop/Puppet), Claire Sangster (Lighting), Marisa Barnes (Sound /Original Score), Jon Cohen (Dramaturg)
Art by Alex Todaro
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