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Sloan Elle Garner

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PhD Theatre & Performance Studies
Graduate Teaching Assistant

Sloan Elle Garner (she/her) is a production dramaturg and director with experience in devising, musical theatre, and adaptation. Sloan’s dramaturgical practice relies on offering tangible and relational experiences to casts, crews, and audiences to deepen relationships to text and narrative. She is the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas Southeast Regional Vice President and an alumnae of Alpha Psi Omega.

She graduated from Mississippi School of the Arts with discipline focuses in theatre and music before earning her BA in Theatre from The University of Southern Mississippi, where she minored in Applied Music - Bassoon and graduated from the Honors College summa cum laude as a Presidential Scholar. She then obtained her MA in Theatre with a focus in dramaturgy from Villanova University, where she was a Thomas and Tracey Gravina Endowed Scholar. Sloan is currently the Instructor of Record for Dramaturgy. Previously, she has been Program Coordinator of the Theatre and Dance Departments at Eastern University, Dramaturg in Residence at Evergreen Theatre Collective, and Theatre Instructor at Grenada High School.

Sloan’s research specialties are in survivors' art and the intersection of ethnomusicology and dramaturgy, with projects ranging from operas of the Shoah to pinpeat orchestras after the Khmer Rouge genocides to the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Recent projects include dramaturgy for Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the Park with George (Villanova Theatre), music direction for Julia Taudevin’s Move, direction of a devised theatre piece titled Built by Fire, and dramaturgy for Alan Menken and Howard Ashman's Little Shop of Horrors (UGA Theatre). In August 2023, her lesson plans for a values-based global theatre history were featured in a pedagogy gallery walk at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education annual conference, and in December 2023, her paper, "'I See Towers Where There Were Trees': Semiotic Conservational Messaging in Sunday in the Park with George," was included in the Eco-Drama: Images of Transformation Working Session at the American Society for Theatre Research annual conference. In August 2024, she will present as part of the Middle Eastern Theatre Emerging Scholars panel at ATHE. In the spring, Sloan will be directing Kimberly Belflower's John Proctor Is the Villain in the Cellar Theatre.

With the moniker “Southern Directurg,” Sloan is passionate about uplifting communities in the rural Deep South and lower Appalachia through education, community resources, empathy, and art.

Education:

MA Theatre | Villanova University 2023

BA Theatre | University of Southern Mississippi 2019

Research Interests:

intersection of ethnomusicology & dramaturgy

survivors' art

theatre education

Selected Publications:

Unfinished Women Cry in No Man’s Land While a Bird Dies in a Gilded Cage. Chyna Michele (Dir.), USA: Camden Repertory Theatre (2023).” Studies in Musical Theatre 17, no. 2.

“I See Towers Where There Were Trees.” Filmed April 2023 at TEDxVillanova University, Villanova, PA. Video, 10:51. https://youtu.be/k_pVyeLTIsU.

“Three Forms of Death in David Rabe’s The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Sticks and Bones.” Honors Theses (625), 2019. https://aquila.usm.edu/honors_theses/625.

Interests:

Southeastern & Appalachian advocacy

environmental advocacy

devised & movement-based theatre

global theatre

Events featuring Sloan Elle Garner
Room 400 | Fine Arts Building

Prior to the Friday, April 19 performance of Little Shop of Horrors, the department will be hosting a panel related to the production titled, "Thinking Green: Botany, B-Movies, & Body-ody-ody." The panel will discuss various aspects of UGA Theatre's production as they relate to real-world botanical influences, the role of B-Movies of the 1950s as…

Major Professor

Associate Professor

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