Sloan Elle Garner

Sloan Elle Garner is a production dramaturg, director, and intimacy choreographer 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, an alumnae of Alpha Psi Omega, and the Graduate Representative for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Theatre & Religion Focus Group.

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 has served as the Instructor of Record for THEA4700: Dramaturgy and THEA2110: Voices of Diversity. She currently serves as Instructor of Record for THEA3290: Script Analysis and oversees the UGA Theatre production dramaturgs. 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 specialty is in Southeastern identity, and her projected dissertation research will be using archival work to string together the first ever narrative of Atlanta theatre history during the New South period. Favorite artistic 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, and her recent direction of Kimberly Belflower's John Proctor Is the Villain in the Cellar Theatre, earning her a Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Region IV nomination. Since arriving at UGA, her work has been featured at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (2023-25), the American Society for Theatre Research (2023-25), Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (2024), the Tennessee Williams Scholars Conference (2026), and UGA's Music Research Symposium (2024).

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