Playwright of West End show defends ‘Black only’ nights

The playwright of an upcoming West End show has defended staging certain performances to an ‘all-Black identifying audience’.

Jeremy O. Harris said ‘Black out’ nights for his show Slave Play would help marginalised communities feel ‘invited’ to the theatre.

He told the BBC that it was necessary to ‘radically invite’ people so that they feel they belong there, and that the allocated nights would make them feel ‘safe’.

Two evening performances of Slave Play, which stars Kit Harrington from Game of Thrones, on July 17 and September 17, have been set aside as invitation-only events for Black-identifying theatre-goers.

Mr Harris said: ‘I think that one of the things that we have to remember is that people have to be radically invited to a space to know they belong there.

‘In most places in the West, poor people and Black people have been told that they do not belong inside a theatre.

‘As someone who wants and yearns for Black and brown people to be in the theatre, who comes from a working class, environment… it is a necessity to invite them in with initiatives that say ‘You’re invited. Specifically you.’

When asked if the decision was prejudicial in excluding White people from certain shows, the playwright replied: ‘There are a litany of places in our country that are generally inhabited by only White people and no-one has questions about that.

‘No-one is saying that by inviting Black audiences here you are uninvited. The idea of a ‘Black-out’ night is to say ‘this is a night where we are specifically inviting Black people to fill up the space, to feel safe with a lot of other Black people in a place where they often do not feel safe.’

He added that Black and White audiences responded to things differently.

Mr Harris’s play Daddy staged ‘Black-out’ nights during its London run in 2022.

Slave Play opens at the Noel Coward Theatre on June 29. In addition to ‘Black-out’ performances see 30 tickets priced at £1 each Wednesday, with ten seats offered each day at just £10 each.