The West End play that is putting on black-only nights
We want to free ourselves from the audience’s ‘white gaze’, say theatre bosses
A PLAY about racism has banned white people from two shows to allow black audience members to enjoy it ‘free from the white gaze’.
Slave Play, which features Game of Thrones actor Kit Harington, is coming to the Noël Coward Theatre in London’s West End from June 29 to September 21.
But on the evenings of July 17 and September 17, the theatre will be open only to an ‘all-black identifying audience’.
One senior Tory MP, who did not want to be named, said: ‘I understand the subject matter of the show may have particular resonance for some but I would simply question the legality of this? In other circles, it would be illegal and racial discrimination. I don’t understand why this isn’t.’
Slave Play, written by Jeremy O Harris, sparked controversy when it was staged on Broadway in 2019. Some argued the play – surrounding three interracial couples attempting to reinvigorate their relationships while role-playing being on a plantation
– made light of chattel slavery and left at least one audience member ‘offended and traumatised’.
Despite the row, Slave Play got 12 Tony nominations in 2021. The play’s original run on Broadway also debuted the ‘Black Out’ performance, which restricts audience attendance to ‘black-identifying’ members.
Playwright O Harris said he was
‘so excited’ to recreate the events with the play’s London run. A website for the Black Out initiative said the idea is ‘the purposeful creation of an environment in which an all-Black-identifying audience can experience and discuss an event in the performing arts, film, athletic, and cultural spaces – free from the white gaze’. O Harris said: ‘People have to be radically invited into a space to know that they belong there and in most places in
the West, poor people and black people have been told that they do not belong inside the theatre.
‘For me, as someone who wants and yearns for black and brown people to be in the theatre, who comes from a working-class environment, who wants people who do not make six figures to feel like theatre is a place for them, it is a necessity to radically invite them in with initiatives that say, “You’re invited, specifically you”.’
Asked if it did not make him uncomfortable that it was telling white people they were not allowed, he responded: ‘There
are a litany of places that are generally only inhabited by white people, and nobody is questioning that – and nobody is saying by inviting black audiences here you are uninvited. ‘The idea of a Black Out night is to say this is a night that we are specifically inviting black people to fill the space, to feel safe with a lot of other black people in a place
where they often do not feel safe.’ Last May, Theatre Royal Stratford East in London was blasted after it said white patrons should not go to a performance of Tambo & Bones on July 5.
Ex- Cabinet minister Damian Green said then: ‘Putting on a public show and then asking people of a certain ethnicity not to come is misguided and a bit sinister.’
However, Matthew Xia, director of Tambo & Bones, claimed it was important theatre created a space where black theatre- goers could ‘explore complex, nuanced race-related issues’.
‘In other circles, it would be illegal’
‘A space where people feel safe’