A SAMUEL FRENCH, LTD. TITLE

St Joan of the Stockyards

Full-Length Play, Satire/Political Satire  /  3w, 9m

Bertolt Brecht, Ralph Manheim

The play charts Joan's battle with Pierpont Mauler, the unctuous owner of a meat-packing plant. Like her predecessor, Joan is a doomed woman, a martyr and (initially, at least) an innocent in a world of strike-breakers, fat cats, and penniless workers.

Request licence

St Joan of the Stockyards

Request licence
  • Cast Size
    Cast Size
    3w, 9m
  • SubGenre
    Subgenre
    Period
  • Audience
    Target Audience
    Adult

Details

Summary

In the stockyards and commercial exchanges of modern Chicago, Salvation Army girl Joan Dark imagines that the meat-packer king Piermont Mauler is going to save the falling market and prevent unemployment. She helps the workers to organise a general strike, and Mauler is persuaded to lead the meat ring out of its troubles. Johanna, desperately ill, is canonised by Mauler for her work among the poor, and she vainly denounces the class system as she dies. 

Cast Attributes
Keywords

Joan Dark, lieutenant in the Black Straw Hats 
Pierpont Mauler, meat king 
Cridle/Graham/Lennox/Meyers, meat packers 
Slift, a broker 
Mr Luckerniddle
Gloomb, a worker
Paul Snyder, major in The Black Straw Hats 
Mulberry, a landlord
A waiter
Meat Packers
Wholesalers
Stockbreeders
Brokers
Speculators
Black Straw Hats 
Workers
Labour leaders 
The Poor 
Detectives 
Newspapermen
Newsboys
Soldiers
Passers-by

  • Time Period 1930s
  • Setting

    1930s Chicago  

  • Cautions
    • Mild Adult Themes

Licensing & Materials

  • Minimum Fee: £70 per performance plus VAT when applicable.

Authors

Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), playwright, poet and director, was born in Augsburg, Germany in February 1898. He established himself as a playwright during the 1920s and early 1930s with plays such as Baal, Man is Man, The Threepenny Opera and The Mother. In 1933, as Hitler came ...
View full profile
Author

Now Playing