The Brooklyn Rail

Naomi Wallace writes plays about bodies in jeopardy, bodies under duress, bodies facing a mortal danger, whether it is the London plague of 1665, a high-speed locomotive crossing a Kentucky train trestle, or an Israeli tank threatening to bulldoze the Rafah zoo in Gaza. But the vulnerability of bodies is no more visceral than in her 1996 play Slaughter City, which takes place in a meatpacking plant in Louisville, Kentucky. Thanks to the ambitious Brooklyn-based Small Boat Productions and artistic director Ben Natan, the play is about to receive its long-overdue New York premiere in a production directed by Reuven Glezer.

Small Boat Productions’s inaugural production in the summer of 2024 was Clifford Odets’s Waiting for Lefty. Slaughter City is also a play about workers caught up in a labor dispute, but unlike the Odets, it explicitly takes place—as many Wallace plays do—at the volatile intersection of race and class and gender. In late August, I spoke with Naomi Wallace via Zoom from her home in a country village in North Yorkshire, England about this bold early play and her thirty-year career since then. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for length.

Scott T. Cummings (Rail): Let's start with some basics. What was the inspiration for Slaughter City? Why did you write it?

Naomi Wallace: I was in Louisville for a period, and I heard there was a strike at the Fischer’s Packing Company there, and I began to investigate that. When I learned that at that time it was the most dangerous job in America, I thought there's a play in there. I did a lot of reading about the industry and the strike, but I wanted to talk to the people who worked there, who had the lived experience inside the packhouse. I contacted someone at the center of it all, and they brought in half a dozen workers who were willing to talk with me about why they were not happy with their contract, why they felt that they were not getting the dignity and respect that they deserved. I was hearing a specific and powerful language around resistance, around rebellious labor that I felt I didn’t hear enough of on the American stage, and I wanted to hear more.

Rail: But this is not a docudrama or an oral history play. There's humor in the play, lyricism, and fantastic elements involving characters who are not bound by time. Where does that come from?

Wallace: I've never been interested in what we call realism or naturalism for the stage. We can get that on television. I have always felt that the past, what we call the forces of history, are very much within the present—but often invisible. So for me the job was how do I make the currents of past labor struggles visible in the present moment. And a sort of hallucinatory vision that is lyrical, as you say, that contains magic, sometimes tells us more about the real than being realistic does.

Rail: The play had its world premiere in January 1996 at the Royal Shakespeare Company directed by Ron Daniels. What kind of mark did he leave on the play?

Wallace: Ron wouldn't let me get away with anything that was less than right. I can remember him saying about a certain character, "This character does not have what they need. Where are the words to tell us who they are?" He's a Shakespearean director. He knows structure like the back of his hand. He also knows that if you want to subvert structure you have to do it right. It was one of my most fruitful collaborations.

Rail: And almost thirty years later, Ron Daniels directed your most recent play in New York, The Return of Benjamin Lay, written with historian Marcus Rediker and performed back in March at the Sheen Center on Bleecker Street.

Wallace: Ron made a mark on that play as well. He was a big influence.

Rail: Slaughter City is a relatively early play of yours. When you look at it today, is there anything that sticks out to you, for better or worse?

Wallace: It's always a little nerve-wracking to re-read your own work, but when I did, I felt like the play was still relevant. And not just politically but in terms of its vision. It felt like something I could have written five or ten years ago instead of thirty. There's one character, Cod, whose sexuality is very fluid. I might have written Cod differently today, but there's nothing stopping that character from being exactly what I meant them to be in other hands. Once I release a play into the world, I want directors and actors to make it their own, to make it work for them.

Rail: Will you be able to attend the Small Boat production?

Wallace: I wish I could be there, but I can’t travel in October. Reuven and I have had some in-depth conversations and I believe he understands the play and what I was attempting to do. I think it is a challenging play to direct. Reuven knows that this is not emotional realism. It is Brechtian in its temperament. It’s not about the emotional stories of these individuals. It’s about a group of people heading toward a crisis. I am excited about what Reuven is going to do. I am honored that Small Boat chose Slaughter City. And coming after Waiting for Lefty, I am good with that.

Rail: I want to focus for a moment on your current work. In the past few years you have been working on a trio of inter-related plays. The first two, The Breach and What Need For Heaven, are complete and have been produced. What is the status of the third play?

Wallace: It is done, I am happy to tell you. I wrote the third part this summer. It is called Eden. It is commissioned by a national theater in France called Nouveau Théâtre Besançon. And it will be done first in French by a director named Tommy Milliot. We'll do a workshop of it next spring. And it is their hope to run the whole trilogy at some point.

Rail: All three plays are set in the Kentucky of your youth. Earlier this year, you were inducted into the Kentucky Writer’s Hall of Fame. What does Kentucky mean to you now?

Wallace: Kentucky has always haunted me but in a way that I welcome. I grew up in Kentucky, and in my formative teenage years I ran with what some would call "a rough crowd." Half of the friends of my youth are dead now, through suicide, through drugs, through being crushed by an American dream that promised them much and delivered nothing. I feel deeply rooted in Kentucky. It doesn't matter that I live in England. Kentucky is here with me right now in North Yorkshire.

Rail: You have written the book for a John Mellencamp musical titled Jack & Diane to be directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall. What's the status of that project?

Wallace: It's still alive. We have producers. We're looking to place it. Mellencamp is a hero of mine and I grew up with his music.

Rail: When you're not being a playwright, how do you spend your time?

Wallace: Here in North Yorkshire, the best thing I did all summer was raise a swallow that fell from the rafters in the barn. I also rescued a wounded pigeon and a shrew. I also take care of the occasional hedgehog. I am drawn to any kind of critter, so that's how I spent some of my time this summer. I teach and give talks on writing. And then, of course, a constant reading to educate myself. And doing whatever I can about Gaza.

Rail: Do you see any hope for Gaza?

Wallace: There is hope in resistance. Resistance to what diminishes us, resistance to genocide, resistance to occupation. And as long as that spirit exists, there is hope. And that spirit will never die in Palestine. Nor does that spirit die among others in the world who work for justice and against colonialism and imperialism and war. At times things may seem hopeless and dark but so many people across the world are resisting oppression in a multitude of creative ways, and acting in solidarity with others. This always gives me hope.

Rail: You've been writing for a long time. Where do you turn for inspiration these days?

Wallace: I get my inspiration from poets and musicians, from historians like Robin D.G. Kelley and Marcus Rediker. From outlets like Democracy Now! and Drop Site News, from journalists like Jeremy Scahill, Max Blumenthal, Noura Erakat, Owen Jones, Chris Hedges. These impeccable journalists are maintaining a standard of truth telling that mainstream journalists from, let’s say, the New York Times and BBC don’t seem to be able to do. I get my inspiration from the journalists in Gaza who with unbelievable courage keep putting on that press jacket. Their heroism inspires me. And, yes, my summer swallow inspired me. And friendships. My friends inspire me.