Something unspeakable happens at an ethical eating startup. Five people give their accounts of why it happened.
Bianca, the social media manager, developed a macabre addiction; Josh, the CTO, had a drug-induced vision; Sasha, the CFO, lost $80,000 in an email exchange; Hannah, the boss, was a total work of art; and DJ, well, he’s just DJ. But who is telling the truth, who is telling their version of the truth, and who is evading the question?
At only 25 years-old playwright Anchuli Felicia King has already had her work produced in London, New York and Melbourne. For the Benita de Wit-directed premiere of Slaughterhouse, King will not only be working as a playwright but also as the Video and Sound Designer.
“I’m getting back to my roots as a multidisciplinary artist” says King. “Benita and I have collaborated on a number of projects where we have blurred the boundaries of different media and disciplines, in close collaboration with each other. As a play that centres on conflicting narratives and voices, it feels so right to tell Slaughterhouse through different mediums.”
After growing up mostly in Australia, King moved to New York to pursue her MFA at Columbia University, where she met de Wit. After developing the play together in New York, they decided to bring it back home to de Wit’s hometown, Sydney.
“This play features Chinese-Australian and Indigenous-Australian characters, so it’s only right for it to premiere here,” de Wit adds.
“We’re telling the story of a scandal at a tech company through a digital design that includes multiple live video feeds, screens and projectors. The audience will be both watching a story unfold and getting a glimpse at the underside, seeing how people manufacture digital narratives in a cut-throat tech industry. Felicia is an artist who works seamlessly across many mediums, so she can relay this story through text, sound and video in a really exciting way.”
Romy Bartz, Adam Marks, Tom Matthews, Brooke Rayner and Stephanie Somerville feature.