Five friends must confront the moral status of the world and their role in it when one of them asks the others to help dispose of her boyfriend’s body.
Slackjawed is a new play that uses elements of satire and horror to personify the chaos and stress of existing in today’s society. In a capitalist world fueled by media consumption, morality and goodness have become a currency that can be trafficked in. You have to be ACTIVE enough, you have to be ENGAGED enough, you have to be CONCERNED enough, or you risk becoming a bad person. If you don’t share the right infographic, if you don’t sign the right petition, every day we engage in the acts of performing our morals for social media.
“Why is it worse for me to cut up and dispose of the dead body of my horrible boyfriend than to purchase products of slave labor? Thousands of politicians and millionaires do morally questionable things all the time in order to have a good life – why can’t I?”
March 26th, 7pm
March 27th, 7pm
March 28th, 7pm
March 29th, 2pm
Nathaniel Foster is a New York City-based Playwright. He writes tiny plays about big things. He is a 2017 Kennedy Center New Play Dramaturgy Fellow, 2018 ASTEP Artist as Citizens Fellow, a 2018 Cape Cod Theatre Project New Play Development Fellow, and a 2019 New Play Development Apprentice at The Public Theater. He was a member of The Workshop Theatre’s Winter//Spring 2020 writers’ intensive. He was a 2020-2021 ArtHouse Inkubator Playwright and a 2021 resident playwright at The Strides Collective. He was the recipient of the 2018 Kennedy Center Ken Ludwig Young Playwright Award. He served as an associate producer for Loading Dock Theatre’s 2020 Forklift season and as an associate producer for Black Lives, Black Words 2020 Plays for the People series. He was a finalist for the 2024 Ojai Playwrights Conference and a member of The Kennedy Center’s 2024 Black Playwrights Gathering Cohort His plays have been seen or developed at The Kennedy Center, The Workshop Theatre, New York Theatre Festival, The Brick, Permafrost Theatre, Fort Collins Fringe Festival, Southern Utah University, Pharmacy Theatre, Mirrobox Theatre, The Strides Collective, Live and in Color, The Hollywood Fringe Festival, and The Tank. Selected Dramaturgy Credits include $#!thole Country Clapback (Dramaturg//Loading Dock Theatre) In Common (Campfire Theatre Festival//Dramaturg) Complicit (Dramaturg//The New Cosmopolitans) Reykjavik (Kennedy Center// Ast. Dramaturg) Leftovers (Kennedy Center//Ast. Dramaturg)