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.

Slaughter City

Literature & Fiction

Wallace, Naomi

Dramas & Plays

Faber&Faber

A collection of four plays by women - three British and one American.

Bush Theatre Plays: Keyboard Skills, Boys Mean Business, Two Lips Indifferent Red, One Flea Spare

Johnson, Catherine

Oglesby, Tamsin

Bruce, Lesley

Dalton Chance is 15 years old and an open book. Pace Creagan, aged 17, is fearless and feared, and to Dalton, she's irresistible. A poetic, Depression-era play by a prize-winning writer; a coming-of-age story with a wicked twist that reaches into the depths of a nation and asks what lies beneath.

Trestle at Pope Lick Creek

Faber and Faber

Two imprisoned young women, one African American and the other white, form a perilous bond. As they serve time they forge a plan for survival. They practice hard. If they don't get it right they'll lose everything: the outside world is even more dangerous to their friendship than the jail itself. Exploring the fierce dreams of youth and the brutal reality of adulthood in 1950's segregated America, Naomi Wallace's And I and Silence premiered at the Finborough Theatre, London, in May 2011.

And I and Silence

"I sat in a theater at the Humana Festival last year, after the closing monologue of ONE FLEA SPARE, unable to move. I had known Naomi Wallace's work well, having directed an earlier play, and I knew she had tremendous talent and promise to do great things. Nothing had prepared me - not my admiration for her plays and for her beautiful, harsh, moving, brilliantly political poetry - for the experience of watching this play, which is in my opinion one of the finest works of dramatic literature written here or in England in the last two decades. Utterly without sentiment but possessed of a very great human heart, ONE FLEA SPARE touches upon many things, class and gender and the pressures of a plague upon internal and external human constructs; and, as I read it, most devastatingly it addresses a tragedy of almost inexpressible dimensions: the consequences of the horrors of biology and Capital on the young. As the play draws to its shattering close I was filled with thoughts of the children of Sarajevo and Rwanda and the slums of America. 'Almost' inexpressible except in the hands of a true poet, and Naomi Wallace so magnificently proves herself to be. Her ability to articulate the inarticulable, grief and loss and suffering beyond endurance, is a source of hope; as is the resilience and passion of the marvelous characters she's assembled. Everyone who loves the theater should read this play. It has made me INTENSELY envious and very full of joy." -Tony Kushner "Naomi Wallace sharply tightens her focus in this latest, thrillingly original work, set for the most part in a virtually bare London room during the Great Plague." -Jeremy Kingston, The Times (London) "Poetic ... Naomi Wallace's ONE FLEA SPARE is another example of fine, ambitious writing ... The London plague is evoked in statistics and the overwhelming reality of quirky, Marivaux-like social role reversals in a single room." -Michael Coveney, The Observer (London) "Naomi Wallace makes an opaque but artful and haunting New York debut with her ONE FLEA SPARE ... ONE FLEA SPARE is built to provoke, not to distract, and it doesn't surrender its meanings easily. But the play's powerful sexual subtext and its beautiful poetic surface reveal an original theatrical imagination. Whether Wallace will find a big audience remains to be seen. She has a big talent, though. Wherever her plays are mounted, they're worth finding." -John Lahr, The New Yorker

One Flea Spare

Naomi Wallace

Broadway Play Publishing, Incorporated

Dalton Chance is 15 years old and an open book. Pace Creagan, aged 17, is fearless and feared, and to Dalton, she's irresistible. High atop a railroad trestle that spans a bone dry creek, two teenagers plan to race across the bridge against an oncoming locomotive. At first their scheme adds excitement to life in a small factory town during the Great Depression, then sensual experience awakens dangerous passions in an era of stifled ambitions. With theatrical flourish and lyrical finesse, Naomi Wallace delves into a world where people struggle to change lives that bear down upon them. "… Naomi Wallace, the thirty-eight-year-old Kentucky playwright at work here, received a MacArthur 'genius grant' last week, and TRESTLE AT POPE LICK CREEK, her lovely, strikingly poetic Depression-era play … certainly illustrates what makes her deserving … the play sometimes seems like a blend of Ingmar Bergman and Horton Foote, with Thornton Wilder on the side … TRESTLE is set in 1936 in a in a town so dull that the only thing young people can pit themselves against, the only thing greater than them, is the 7:10 train with its 153-ton engine and deafening roar. So we find Dalton and Pace, who becomes his girlfriend despite his repeated insistence that she is not pretty, making plans to test themselves by trying to outrun the train on a trestle a hundred feet above a dry creek bed. Another boy from their town tried it recently and died … By the end, the play, like that train, has built up a full head of steam and we feel its power." -Anita Gates, The New York Times "… TRESTLE is an often poignant, nonlinear-narrative coming-of-age story that's set in 1936 in a 'town outside a city, somewhere in the United States … TRESTLE is at once charming and haunting … you'll view it with wonder along the way." -Sam Whitehead, Time Out "… The honor for the most original and memorable work of this year's 22nd Humana Festival goes to another Kentuckian, Naomi Wallace, for her brilliant THE TRESTLE AT POPE LICK CREEK … After the two-act play ended with an erotic, gender-twisted climax, there was a moment in the darkness when I thought: 'This must be how it felt when people saw A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE for the very first time.' Like Tennessee Williams's daring play, Wallace's work introduces a new level of sexual honesty with a fresh mature voice. TRESTLE wraps its five characters in a metaphorical drama within a romantic and tragic mystery. It's a complicated, interwoven play that moves back and forth in time between past and present, with layers of meaning that overlap and build upon each other. Despite its depth of symbolism and clear political message, the play is neither stuffy nor strident. A bright ripple of humor funs through Wallace's play about two sexually charged young people who consider a game of chicken with an oncoming train. Wallace's keen psychological insights evoke compassion for her characters. Tears are shed and not only over the pathos of the play … The actors stir the emotions with the tender way they expose the fragility and indomitable beauty of the human spirit, as revealed through Wallace's words … If Wallace's plays were a visual art, ONE FLEA SPARE would be a baroque oil painting, while THE TRESTLE AT POPE LICK CREEK would be a 1930s American photograph with contrasting lights and shadows and its direct, unsentimental and uncensored gaze into the lives of the working class." -Judith Egerton, Courier-Journal, Louisville

The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek

In this witty adventure for young audiences by MacArthur “genius” award winner Naomi Wallace, a young girl called Noil finds herself in a strange new place, and must accomplish three and a half magical tasks before she can return home. Noil is clever and resourceful, and with some assistance from a singing narrator and a talking roach, she emerges from the hole in her sweater in time for breakfast.This play can be performed with as few as seven actors, and several roles are suitable for male or female performers.Naomi Wallace’s other plays include THE FEVER CHART, IN THE HEART OF AMERICA, ONE FLEA SPARE, SLAUGHTER CITY, THE TRESTLE AT POPE LICK CREEK and THE WAR BOYS.

The Girl Who Fell Through a Hole in Her Sweater

McLeod, Bruce

This book contains three thematically related pieces: A STATE OF INNOCENCE, THE RETREATING WORLD, and BETWEEN THIS BREATH AND YOU

The Fever Chart

Broadway Play Publishing

In Depression-era Alabama, black Sunday school teacher and Communist Party member Tice Hogan lives on the edge of trouble. When a white factory worker on the run demands sanctuary, Tice and his daughter may be pushed over that edge. "THINGS OF DRY HOURS is a beautiful, brave and devastating play, a profound imaginative delving into radical resistance and hope rising at an impossible moment, in crushingly inhospitable circumstances. No one writes about politics, history and all that's hidden underneath better than Naomi Wallace. Ferocious, tender, whimsical, tough, brutally direct, poetically elusive, her voice is utterly unique and essential. I'm grateful, as always, for her unsparing, painful, sexy stirring up of our human selves." -Tony Kushner "Naomi Wallace's gorgeously written and philosophically rich celebration of a black Communist agitator in the Depression-era South ... Wallace weaves together these proud, lonely souls with language rich in metaphor and, at times, as hard and piercing as a handful of nails." -Time Out New York "Naomi Wallace's fierce new play tackles the plight of black communists in America ... Naomi Wallace is a dangerous woman ... not only in her writing ... but also in her personal stand against what she sees as injustice and the peeling away of democratic rights." -The Guardian (U K)

Things of Dry Hours

Two imprisoned young women, one African American and the other white, form a perilous bond. As they serve time they forge a plan for survival. They practice hard. If they don't get it right they'll lose everything: the outside world is even more dangerous to their friendship than the jail itself. Exploring the fierce dreams of youth and the brutal reality of adulthood in 1950's segregated America. "Unmissable ... an exquisitely understated examination of female friendship and unspoken love. It's a truly American tragedy about two women who want so little and get nothing except from each other, yet it is leavened with humour. Wallace's devastating, moving play is entirely without extravagance and artifice and is completely grounded in the harshness of the real world." -Lyn Gardner, The Guardian "Naomi Wallace's short, painful prison drama uses the backdrop of racially segregated '50s America to weave a tale of the hope that can blossom behind bars, and the despair that can destroy a life outside them." -Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out "In just 75 minutes on a tiny, almost bare stage, playwright Naomi Wallace conjures a compelling picture of friendship against the odds in the segregated America of the Fifties." -Fiona Mountford, London Evening Standard "AND I AND SILENCE is a play that takes on big themes in a very small way and has the ability to be both powerful and touching, leading to an unforgettable dénouement." -Philip Fisher, The British Theatre Guide "A former MacArthur genius fellow and Obie winner, Wallace is one of the most subtle and politically engaged American playwrights of her generation. Once again, the question arises: Why isn't this superb writer more widely produced? ... Thanks to Wallace's delicate touch and generous imagination, AND I AND SILENCE unfolds into a story of love whose unexpected emotional power sideswipes the audience." -Karen Fricker, Variety

And I And Silence

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