The playwright behind ‘Slave Play’ has argued that segregation is necessary for black people to “feel safe”
White people have been told not to attend two upcoming performances of a play about racism and sexuality in London’s West End. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s office has condemned the move as “wrong and divisive.”
Written by Jeremy O Harris, who is black, ‘Slave Play’ opens in London’s Noel Coward Theater in June and runs until September. Two performances of the play – on July 17 and September 17 – are billed as “Black Out” nights, tickets for which will only be sold to “all-black-identifying audiences.”
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“The idea of a Black Out night is to say this is a night that 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,” Harris told the BBC on Tuesday.
Despite explicitly asking only black people to attend the performances, Harris then claimed that “nobody is saying that by inviting black audiences here [white people] are uninvited.”
In an apparent climbdown the following day, Harris wrote on X that black people “can bring their white friends or lovers if they want.”
Sunak’s office nevertheless condemned the plan. “Clearly, restricting audiences on the basis of race would be wrong and divisive,” a spokesperson for the prime minister said on Thursday. Asked by the BBC whether the government would consider stripping public funding from theaters that engage in such discrimination, the spokesperson did not offer a definitive yes or no answer.