Sloan Elle Garner

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 Graduate Teaching Assistant for Theatre and Modernity. In the fall, she will be 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 ethnodramaturgy (the intersection of ethnomusicology and dramaturgy) and survivors’ art, 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, assistant direction for Lauren Gunderson's Silent Sky (UGA Theatre), and direction of a devised theatre piece titled Built by Fire. 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. You can see Sloan's dramaturgical work on UGA Theatre's Little Shop of Horrors.

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.