• By ROBIN MILLER
• Arts writer
• Published: Mar 14, 2010

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She was Aileen Wuornos in real life, the woman who became the world’s first female serial killer by murdering seven men in a year.

That year took place on Interstate 75 in Florida between November 1989 and 1990. Wuornos died at age 46 on Oct. 9, 2002. The cause of death was lethal injection at the Florida State Prison in Starke.

A horrible story, right? Horrible enough to inspire a television movie starring Jean Smart, two documentary films, the 2003 feature film Monster, for which actress Charlize Theron won an Academy Award, and a 2001 opera, which premiered in San Francisco.

Oh, and the Carson Kreitzer play that Swine Palace will open on Friday, March 19, in the Studio Theatre in the LSU Music and Dramatic Arts Building. Self Defense, or  death of some salesmen, it’s called. It’s the third in Kreitzer’s “Women Who Kill” series.

Still, Wuornos wasn’t just a “woman who killed,” which is obvious considering the fascination surrounding her story. But really, Wuornos was somehow different.

“She’s a complex personality,” Joanna Battles said. “She’s vicious, but she’s vulnerable, and the play finds a balance in that.”

Battles is directing Self Defense, her first time working with Swine Palace. She directed last season’s Main Stage production Spring Awakening for the LSU Department of Theatre.

That play also dealt with dark themes and was also performed within the black confines of a studio theater, then located in the basement of Hatcher Hall.

That theater officially was closed with the opening of the newly renovated Music and Dramatic Arts Building in September.

“And we’re trying to expose our audiences to our new spaces,” Battles said. “The first Swine Palace play of the season was performed in the Shaver Theatre, and the second was in the Reilly. So, we’re using the Studio Theatre for the third.”

And it’s fitting, for there’s something intimate about this play. Personal.

Wournos’ character, known as Jolene Palmer, provides the audience with insight through dialogues with herself. But that’s only part of the picture.

“You see the other characters through the eyes of Jolene,” Battles said. “But Carson Kreitzer used actual police interviews when creating the other characters for this play. And in this production, everyone but Staci plays two or three characters, which enables them to look at Jolene in different ways.”