
Small Boat Productions
Artist-Led Production Company
WAITING FOR LEFTY • 8/22 – 9/8/2024
The Flea theater
In a series of vignettes returning to a high-tempered union meeting, this Great Depression-era play explores the social repercussions of economic hardship. From workplace struggles to the stress placed on romantic relationships, this revival casts a harsh light on the realities of living under Capitalism.
The thrillingly real characters in Lefty struggle against villains we all know: the cost of living, corporate malpractice, institutional racism, antisemitism, and war profiteering.
"This is really a play about self-determination. It is about people who are sick of waiting for hapless leaders to better their conditions and instead take it upon themselves to change the world for the better. In a moment of unprecedented insurgency of the American labor movement and activists across this country, it feels like the right time to do such a play," says Ben Natan, founder of Small Boat Productions and co-executive producer on Lefty.
Slaughter City • 10/4 – 10/18/2025
A.R.T./New York’s Gural Theater
Slaughter City is a play written by Naomi Wallace, the story of otherworldly employment at a slaughterhouse.
The play was inspired by a number of labor-related incidents including the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 and the 1993 strike at the Fischer's meat packing plant in Louisville, Kentucky.
The drama follows the lives of a group of workers who work at a modern day plant. While work gets tougher and more dangerous, their wages are being cut, and benefits reduced. Into the fray walks Cod, a strange young man who tries to inspire them to action. But Cod has his own secrets, which include once being a scab, and is in a long term battle with the Sausage Man, a battle whose outcome will affect them all in deadly ways.
The play is divided into two acts and moves back and forth (and sometimes seemingly sideways) through time. Love, desire and friendship between these workers is disrupted, and transformed by the political pressures swirling around them.