Music by Andrew Ingkavet

This is the last week of Naomi Wallace’s Slaughter City onstage at Son of Semele in Los Angeles.  Please go check it out if you can.

BackStage said this:

Only a playwright as talented as Naomi Wallace could craft a work set in a slaughterhouse that is this lyrical and creative. Childhood friends Roach (Christina Ogunade) and Maggot (Sarah Boughton) work together in a hellish slaughterhouse with little hope of their union improving their lot in life. Young, handsome, overeducated Brandon (Christopher Emerson) pursues the elder, cautious Roach but is rebuffed. Meanwhile, Roach is smitten with a curious newcomer, Cod (Noelle Messier), who it turns out has a mystical, demonic connection to Sausage Man (Alexander Wells), who puts pressure on the management to push the workers harder and harder.

Director Barbara Kallir has a tall order here—working with rich language, singing, and choreographed meat-cutting, much knife-handling, and, at its core, a dual love story that competes with Wallace’s sometimes hallucinatory imagery. By and large, she succeeds.

About the Music

The music for this show was very dark and quite cinematic.  As in my previous collaboration with Son of Semele and director Barbara Kallir, we spoke at length about the color palette for this production.  Brown, black, white, grey, sepia tones, sickly pale yelow.  Overall, the visual color palette found in much of painter Sue Coe’s work.  This was to be contrasted by some “a cappella” singing, much of it in a blues vein and some in the union protest songs of the 1930’s and 40’s.

Here’s some free music downloads from the show.

Cue 3 – The Industrial Slaughter Complex

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I’m Gonna Cut You – instrumental track

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We Pack It All For You – instrumental track

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Cue 44 – The Dirge

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Cue 41 – The Sausage Man’s Theme

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Cue 10 – Transition – Back to Work!

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