Hiddleston took on a the role of Cod, a woman disguised as a man, in Slaughter City by Naomi Wallace.
“I thought theater people wouldn't see me if I hadn't trained. I didn't want to just be the Brideshead guy, to spend the rest of my life wearing waistcoats. I got the chance to try ... Not just Romeos, but pimps and grandfathers and even one role as a woman in a Naomi Wallace play called Slaughter City.” Telegraph
Slaughter City is a play written by Naomi Wallace. It tells the story of the otherworldly Cod's employment at a slaughterhouse.
The play was inspired by a number of labor-related incidents including the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 and the 1993 strike at the Fischer's meat packing plant in Louisville, Kentucky.
The drama follows the lives of a group of workers who work at a modern day plant. While work gets tougher and more dangerous, their wages are being cut, and benefits reduced. Into the fray walks Cod, a strange young man who tries to inspire them to action. But Cod has his own secrets, which include once being a scab, and is in a long term battle with the cool Sausage Man, a battle whose outcome will affect them all in deadly ways.
The play is divided into two acts and moves back and forth (and sometimes seemingly sideways) through time. Love, desire and friendship between these workers is disrupted, and transformed by the political pressures swirling around them. And the boss is beginning to make strange noises, just when his assistant has had enough.
The live stage performance rights are licensed by Broadway Play Publishing Inc.
Roach- an African American worker in her mid-thirties
Maggot- a white worker in her mid-thirties
Brandon- a white worker in his early twenties
Cod- a white worker of Irish descent, mid-thirties
Tuck- an African American, mid- forties
Textile Worker- a woman in her twenties
Sausage Link Man- a white man, somewhat elderly, energetic
Mr. Baquin- a white company manager in his fifties