''Slaughter City'' is a play written by

Naomi Wallace Naomi Wallace (born 1960) 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. Biography Naomi Wallace was born in Prospect, Kentucky, ...

. It tells the story of the otherworldly Cod's employment at a

slaughterhouse In livestock agriculture and the meat industry, a slaughterhouse, also called an abattoir (), is a facility where livestock animals are slaughtered to provide food. Slaughterhouses supply meat, which then becomes the responsibility of a mea ...

Plot

The play was inspired by a number of

labor Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

-related incidents including the

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, a borough of New York City, on Saturday, March 25, 1911, was the deadliest List of industrial disasters, industrial disaster in the history of the city, an ...

of 1911 and the 1993 strike at the Fischer's meat packing plant in Louisville, Kentucky. The drama follows the lives of a group of workers who work at a modern day plant. While work gets tougher and more dangerous, their wages are being cut, and benefits reduced. Into the fray walks Cod, a strange young man who tries to inspire them to action. But Cod has his own secrets, which include once being a scab, and is in a long term battle with the cool Sausage Man, a battle whose outcome will affect them all in deadly ways. The play is divided into two acts and moves back and forth (and sometimes seemingly sideways) through time. Love, desire and friendship between these workers is disrupted, and transformed by the political pressures swirling around them. And the boss is beginning to make strange noises, just when his assistant has had enough. The live stage performance rights are licensed by Broadway Play Publishing Inc.

Characters

Roach- an African American worker, mid-thirties Maggot- a white worker, mid-thirties Brandon- a white worker, early twenties Cod- a white worker of Irish descent, mid-thirties Tuck- an African American, mid- forties Textile Worker- a woman, twenties Sausage Man- a white man, energetic, somewhat elderly Baquin- a white company manager, fifties

References

{{Reflist Plays by Naomi Wallace Plays based on actual events