Sloan Elle Garner (she/her) is the Theatre & Dance Administrative Assistant for Eastern University's Theatre and Dance Departments. Outside of Eastern, she is a professional dramaturg and director with experience in devised theatre, musical theatre, stage management, acting, lighting design, sound design, costume design and construction, playwriting, and adaptation. Sloan practices “boots-on-the-ground” dramaturgy, which relies on offering visceral experiences to casts, crews, and audiences to deepen relationships to text and narrative.
She graduated from Mississippi School of the Arts and then went on to earn her Bachelor of Arts in Theatre from The University of Southern Mississippi, where she minored in Applied Music - Bassoon, graduated from the Honors College summa cum laude, and published her thesis entitled “Three Forms of Death in David Rabe’s The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Sticks and Bones.” Sloan is currently pursuing her Master of Arts in Theatre with an emphasis in dramaturgy from Villanova University. She is a member of Alpha Psi Omega and Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas.
Prior to coming to Eastern, Sloan was Dramaturg in Residence at Evergreen Theatre Collective. In production, Sloan has most recently served as Johnny Harmon in Villanova University's Curtains and Box Office Supervisor and Stage Management Supervisor for Eastern University's STILL HERE!.
Sloan’s research specialty is post-communal-trauma drama, with projects ranging from Holocaust cabarets to pinpeat orchestras after the Khmer Rouge genocides to a Lockerbie, Scotland plane crash. Her current projects include Sunday in the Park with George by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine and an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest for State Fair Community College.
With the moniker “Southern Directurg”, Sloan is passionate about uplifting communities in the rural Deep South through education, community resources, compassion, empathy, and art. She loves Dolly Parton, the Drive-By Truckers, the Bible, and her 12-year-old Jack Russell Terrier, Einstein. She loves backpacking, kayaking, rock climbing, and playing bassoon, piano, and steel pans. Whenever able, she and Einstein drive back to Mississippi to visit loved ones and work towards a brighter future in her homeland.
