Getting to the heart of Slaughter City : a personal consideration of a directorial process

This thesis is a detailed account of my experience as director of the Department of Theatre and Dance’s Spring, 2007 production of Naomi Wallace’s Slaughter City at the University of Texas at Austin. I discuss the complete production process, from script selection to the final production, and on to responses to the production and personal reflection in hindsight. A director’s job is to foster and guide a collaboration with a team of fellow artists—designers, actors, technicians, etc.—and ensure that the collaboration results in a cohesive final production in which a story is clearly and evocatively told. This thesis is the story of how I learned to tell the story of this play.